Best 6303 quotes in «nature quotes» category

As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become disenchanted, lose the magical significance, and henceforth simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anything.

as jolaha ka maram na jana, jinh jag ani pasarinhh tana; dharti akas dou gad khandaya, chand surya dou nari banaya; sahastra tar le purani puri, ajahu bine kathin hai duri; kahai kabir karm se jori, sut kusut bine bhal kori; No one could understand the secret of this weaver who, coming into existence, spread the warp as the world; He fixed the earth and the sky as the pillars, and he used the sun and the moon as two shuttles; He took thousands of stars and perfected the cloth; but even today he weaves, and the end is difficult to fathom. Kabir says that the weaver, getting good or bad yarn and connecting karmas with it, weaves beautifully.

Ask the womb of a woman, and say unto her, If thou bring forth children, why dost thou it not together, but one after another? pray her therefore to bring forth ten children at once.

As I sit, my back leaning against a damp, moss-covered tree trunk, my eyes sweeping the canopy above, my ears straining to catch the crack of a distant branch that betrays an orangutan moving in the treetops, I think about how we humans search for God. The tropical rain forest is the most complex thing an ordinary human can experience on this planet. A walk in the rain forest is a walk into the mind of God.

As my grandmother discovered long ago, the Japanese excel in cultivating nature. Their gardens come in numerous styles, including paradise gardens, dry-landscape gardens, stroll gardens, and tea gardens. Although each type has its own goal, tray all share the same principle: nature is manipulated to create a miniature symbolic landscape. A paradise garden is meant to evoke the Buddhist paradise through the use of water dotted with stone "islands." Dry-landscape gardens, usually tucked away in Zen temples, use dry pebbles and stones to create minimalist views for quiet contemplation. Stroll gardens offer changing scenes with every step, a pool of carp here, a mossy trail there, and a small bridge to link them both, while a tea garden provides a serene path to take you from the external world to the spiritual one of the teahouse.

As long as I can find hope in myself, there is hope for the future of the earth and the human race. If I fail to discover hope in myself, there is no hope for the earth or the human race. If I discover the goodness of human nature in myself, I can find it in the entire human race. If I fail to discover it in myself, I can’t expect it from anyone else, either.

A society which devastates its homelands’ nature no more has the right to live in that territories!

As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. [This] clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element.

As I read the woods, I realize that if nothing interferes with the path of an object or a living thing, the possibilities of where it can go are many.

A snake doesn't need feet in grass. A seed doesn't need eyes in soil. A bird doesn't need a parachute in air. A fish doesn't need a suit in water. A bee doesn't need sugar in a hive. A spider doesn't need thread in a bush. A flower doesn't need perfume in a garden. A bat doesn't need binoculars in a cave. A giraffe doesn't need a ladder in the woods. A cricket doesn't need a violin in nature. A camel doesn't need wheels in a desert. A wolf doesn't need a knife in a forest. A lion doesn't need a spear in a jungle. If you throw a bird off a cliff, you are helping it find its wings. If you throw a fish into water, you are helping it find its fins. If you throw a seed into soil, you are helping it find its roots. If you throw a bat into the dark, you are helping it find its eyes. If you throw a flower into dirt, you are helping it find its petals. If you throw a cub into the jungle, you are helping it find its fight. If you throw a camel into the desert, you are helping it find its stride. If you throw a scorpion into nature, you are helping it find its sting. If you throw a serpent into grass, you are helping it find its fangs. If you throw a wolf into the jungle, you are helping it find its bite.

As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.

A societal revolution is politically organic in nature. It can't be engineered. It has to be evolved.

a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest eats itself and lives forever.

Ask the wave as it withdraws what freedom is.

As soon as the torch went out the atmosphere of the forest intensified. As her eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness she started to notice the outlines of canopies above them where trees were silhouetted against the pale moonlight. The sounds around them became more noticeable; the shuffling of an animal through the undergrowth, the whistling of the wind through the trees, and now and then the cry of some creature being captured in the darkness. As they sat quietly, the noises seemed to become louder still until both visitors felt absorbed into the forest world.

As soon as he had left the room and walked into the air, he knew that he would never return and for the first time his fears lifted. It was a spring morning, and when he walked into Severndale Park he felt the breeze bringing back memories of a much earlier life, and he was at peace. He sat beneath a tree and looked up at its leaves in amazement - where once he might have gazed at them and sensed there only the confusion of his own thoughts, now each leaf was so clear and distinct that he could see the lightly coloured veins which carried moisture and life. And he looked down at his own hand, which seemed translucent beside the bright grass. His head no longer ached, and as he lay upon the earth he could feel its warmth beneath him.

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on; And the road didn’t become more beautiful or even more ugly. That’s human action on the outside world. We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And the sun is always punctual every day. (5/7/14)

As the childhood leaves a deep mark in a person’s life, there is a strong influence of childhood in choosing the favourite writer. Say, if someone’s childhood passes amid the village, nature, river etc., then Rabindranath Tagore’s name should appear on top as one of the favourites!

As the natural world grows smaller, so too does its intensity and the size of the window through which it may be viewed.

As people we narrowly get by with our lives each day, energy from our soft, delicate actions appearing like cherry blossoms, only once, and once for a short while. Eventually petals fall to the ground.

A sprawling North London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city’s highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions, mean llamas for mean children and, for the tourists, a country house, its façade painted white enough for any Hollywood close-up, complete with a tea room, although anything you buy there should be eaten outside with the grass beneath your toes, sitting under the magnolia tree, letting the white blossoms, blush-pink at their tips, fall all around you. Hampstead Heath! Glory of London! Where Keats walked and Jarman fucked, where Orwell exercised his weakened lungs and Constable never failed to find something holy.

As the gift of the Creator, natural healing power is ours. That’s why no special method is needed for recovering it. There are no perfect methods, no matter how effective or powerful they may be. What is perfect is our sense of life itself.

As the power and goodness of Heaven are infinite in their extent, and infinite in their minuteness, to the mind cultivated as nature meant it to be, there is not only delight in contemplating the sublimity of the endless sea, or everlasting mountains, or the beauty of wide-extended landscapes; but there is a pleasure in looking at every flower, and every little shell that God has made. Nature has scattered around us, on every side, and for every sense, an in exhaustible profusion of beauty and sweet ness, if we will but perceive it. The pleasures we derive from flowers, from forms, from musical sounds, are surely not given us in vain; and if we are constantly alive to these, we can never be in want of sub jects of agreeable contemplation, and must be habitually cheerful. All that is required, in order that we should duly estimate these things, is that we should not have blunted or exhausted our minds by excessive indulgence of gross appetites and passions. In that fatal case, all those delicious fruits turn to ashes. Indeed, the man who looks at the gifts of nature without pleasure, or who hopes to enjoy the delights and blessings of life without feeling that gratitude to God forms their highest charms, and without becoming in consequence habitually cheerful, is surely much to be pitied.

As the sun went down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was soothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, and held it under in the tide of its own events, till it was drowned, and then I let it go down stream like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded in proportion, and filled them. Then first could I appreciate sound, and find it musical.

As thou hast said unto thy servant, that thou, which gives life to all, hast given life at once to the creature that thou hast created, and the creature bare it: even so it might now also bear them that now be present at once.

As thou know not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou know not the works of what makes all.

As the season changes, we learn to adapt.

A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and murk. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in these woods. Suddenly I was nostalgic for something I'd never knew.

A storm came chasing the sky away. And virgin sands Drank all the water of the evening woods, God's wind blew icicles into the ponds; As I wept I saw gold,- and could not drink. - Delirium II - Alchemy of the Word

A strong ant is better than a weak lion.

As we have said before, for religious man nature is never only natural. Experience of a radically desacralized nature is a recent discovery; moreover, it is an experience accessible only to a minority in modem societies, especially to scientists. For others, nature still exhibits a charm, a mystery, a majesty in which it is possible to decipher traces of ancient religious values. No modern man, however irreligious, is entirely insensible to the charms of nature. We refer not only to the esthetic, recreational, or hygienic values attributed to nature, but also to a confused and almost indefinable feeling, in which, however, it is possible to recognize the memory of a debased religious experience.

-a superb moon, round as a pumpkin and golden as honey, filling the rooftop world with light, and deep, mysterious shadow.

As we apprentice ourselves to the way of nature, we begin to understand that all of life is in a continuous cycle of giving and receiving. It is the honouring of this cycle that makes us feel at home in ourselves and in relation to the rest of nature. In order to experience true belonging, we must not only acknowledge the gifts we are receiving, but also give our beauty away, no matter how it may be received by others.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep - just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don't do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life's length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.

At a minimum, it is clear that human beings who claim a religious tradition that is rooted in compassion and/or respect for the natural world must adopt a plant-based diet.

As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds.

At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature.

At first people ate simply because they were alive and because food was tasty. Modern people have come to think that if they do not prepare food with elaborate seasonings, the meal will be tasteless. If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.

At a time like this maybe the world is looking at us not just at a miracle crusade or sunday church service but the way we are living. Maybe they want to see whether what our Master left for us worked for us; there is a counter spirit to the spirit of fear, it is the love of God.

...at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door...

At dawn the waves looked like mountain ranges tipped with gold as sunbeams slanted low under burgundy clouds.

At first glance, northern hardwood and hemlock forests aren't very sexy - they are the accountants of the forest world, stable and consistent.

A thinker builds his castle of thoughts inside a garden of roses and it loses its relevance among the roses. He builds it along the shore and it’s trampled by the fury of waves eventually. He builds it on a cliff high enough and it becomes impregnable but out of reach. Such is the fate of that castle

A tree’s nature does not change because the wind blew off a few of its leaves.

A toothless wolf is less dangerous than a fanged insect.

A tree is only as good as the seed it is stems from.

A tree is only as good as the seed it sprouts from.

At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: 'Think about the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it.' My advice is: 'Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.' I don't think Mother's advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You'd be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!

A true anecdote which illustrates his unworldly nature is of the instruction he received in 1922 to appear at Buckingham Palace to receive the accolade of the Order of Knighthood; Bayliss replied that as the date coincided with that of a meeting of the Physiological Society, he would be unable to attend.

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,--and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.