Best 6303 quotes in «nature quotes» category

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

I should study Nature's laws in all their crossings and unions; I should follow magnetic streams to their source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their dealings and communications with other powers and expressions of matter.

Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the sky, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?

Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet: he it is who makes the truest use of the pine-who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane. . . .

I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.

I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind; a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts; or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.

It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see.

It appears that all that can be, is. The Creator's hand does not appear to have been opened in order to give existence to a certain determinate number of species, but it seems that it has thrown out all at once a world of relative and non-relative creatures, an infinity of harmonic and contrary combinations and a perpetuity of destructions and replacements. What idea of power is not given us by this spectacle! What feeling of respect for its Author is not inspired in us by this view of the universe!

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

It can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences.

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.

It has been my experience that people who are at cross-purposes with nature are cynical about mankind and ill at ease with themselves.

It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe. Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.

I think an erotics of place may be one of the reasons why environmentalists are seen as subversive. There is a backlash now:... [ellipsis in source] take all the regulations away; weaken existing legislation; the endangered species act is too severe, too restrictive; let there be carte blanche for real-estate developers. Because if we really have to confront wildness, solitude, and serenity, both the fierceness and compassionate nature of the land, then we ultimately have to confront it in ourselves, and it's easier to be numb, to be distracted, to be disengaged.

I think buildings should imitate ecological systems. Ecological systems in nature before we had human beings you know interfere with them exist in a state of stasis - they are self-supporting, self-sustaining.

I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.

I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.

I think people perceive my creatures as absurd because they look different, but at the same time, they are a little bit familiar. I want people to feel a kind of empathy with them. When you think about it, all nature is kind of strange looking.. in fact, I'm a strange a looking creature.

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.

It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation -- they are all better than us and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.

I thought how sadly beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it and it could be called out everywhere again.

it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.

It is always easier to capture eternity in the falling snow or along the coast where the waves crash and in solitary and lonely places. It is the quiet places where it is easiest to feel eternity.

It is also painful to see that the struggle against hunger and malnutrition is hindered by market priorities, the primacy of profit, which have reduced foodstuffs to a commodity like any other, subject to speculation, also of a financial nature, The hungry remain, at the street corner, and ask to be recognized as citizens, to receive a healthy diet. We ask for dignity, not for charity.

It is an old dream: To travel on the back of a benevolent sea beast down to some secret underwater garden.

It is a rule of nature that taking a day off on the farm sets a person back at least a week.

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better.

I thought as I rode in the cold pleasant light of Sunday morning how silent & passive nature offers, every morn, her wealth to man; she is immensely rich, he is welcome to her entire goods, which he speaks no word, only leaves over doors ajar, hall, store room, & cellar. He may do as he will: if he takes her hint & uses her goods, she speaks no word; if he blunders & starves, she says nothing.

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

It is a pleasure to a real lover of Nature to give winter all the glory he can, for summer will make its own way, and speak its own praises.

It is, by common consent, a good thing for people to get back to nature.

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it can fail to influence that person.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

It is clear to me that unless we connect directly with the earth, we will not have the faintest clue why we should save it.

It is important that our relationship with farm animals is reciprocal. We owe animals a decent life and a painless death. I have observed that the people who are completely out of touch with nature are the most afraid of death.

It is important to have a certain amount of solitude just to clear your circuits. You will find that you can be very happy just being by yourself. Go to new places. It will cleanse your spirit.

It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.

It is impossible to be among the woods animals on their own ground without a feeling of expanding one's own world, as when any foreign country is visited.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us.

It is in the wild places, where the edge of the earth meets the corners of the sky, the human spirit is fed.

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

It is most important to have time alone. To be alone is not to be alone. It is only possible to truly feel immortality when we are by ourselves.

It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.