Nature Quotes and Sayings

Nature Quotes

How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! ~Emily Dickinson, letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper, 1880

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir (1838–1914)

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn! ~Logan Pearsall Smith

Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard. ~Standing Bear

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! ~John Muir (1838–1914)

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. ~George Washington Carver

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir (1838–1914)

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Martin Luther

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. ~Henry David Thoreau

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers — for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~Khalil Gibran

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. ~Wendell Berry

And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know? ~Carl Sandburg, Good Morning America, 1928

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats

I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me — I am happy. ~Hamlin Garland, McClure’s, February 1899

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. ~Charles A. Lindbergh, Life, 1967 December 22nd

After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. ~Author Unknown

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another. ~Juvenal, Satires

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. ~Galileo Galilei

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. ~Walt Whitman

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir (1838–1914)

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,

I keep it staying at Home—

With a bobolink for a Chorister,

And an Orchard, for a Dome.

~Emily Dickinson

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. ~Jane Austen

Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons. ~James Russell Lowell

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. ~Lao Tzu

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. ~Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping

Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street. ~William Blake

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. ~Helen Keller

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. ~Henry David Thoreau

Joy all creatures drink

At nature’s bosoms...

~Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), “Ode to Joy,” translated from German

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. ~William Shakespeare

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. ~Frank Lloyd Wright

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. ~William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

To one who has been long in city pent,

’Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

~John Keats, Sonnet XIV

Fieldes have eies and woods have eares. ~John Heywood, 1565

 

   

 

You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness—perhaps ignorance, credulity—helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sentiment of feather’d, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. ~Walt Whitman, “Birds—And a Caution,” Specimen Days

In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them. ~Aldo Leopold

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew,

And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,

and closed them beneath the kisses of night.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Sensitive Plant,” 1820

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~Albert Einstein

I’ve always regarded nature as the clothing of God. ~Alan Hovhaness

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests. ~Thornton Wilder

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~William Shakespeare

Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you’ll find it there. ~Robb Sagendorph

I know the thrill of the grasses when the rain pours over them.

I know the trembling of the leaves when the winds sweep through them.

I know what the white clover felt as it held a drop of dew pressed close in its beauteousness.

I know the quivering of the fragrant petals at the touch of the pollen-legged bees.

I know what the stream said to the dipping willows, and what the moon said to the sweet lavender.

I know what the stars said when they came stealthily down and crept fondly into the tops of the trees.

~Muriel Strode, “Creation Songs” 

Our downfall as a species is that we are arrogant enough to think that we can control Mother Nature and stupid enough to think it is our job. ~Greg Peterson, 1997, www.urbanfarm.org

To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. ~Mahatma Gandhi

The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,

The brooks for the fishers of song;

To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game

The streams and the woods belong.

~Sam Walter Foss

A rhododendron bud lavender-tipped. Soon a glory of blooms to clash with the cardinals and gladden the hummingbirds! ~Dave Beard

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

~Gerard Hopkins

My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms — will it return to my body when they scatter? ~Kotomichi

The tulip and the butterfly

Appear in gayer coats than I:

Let me be dressed fine as I will,

Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still.

~Isaac Watts

Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, and October woods! ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims, “Inspiration”

Nature is my medicine. ~Sara Moss-Wolfe

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. ~Rachel Carson

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature. ~Abraham Cowley

You know why there are so many whitefish in the Yellowstone River? Because the Fish and Game people have never done anything to help them. ~Russell Chatham, Silent Seasons, 1978

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet,

Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe. ~John Berger, The Sense of Sight, 1980

Happiness flutters in the air whilst we rest among the breaths of nature. ~Kelly Sheaffer

He therefore slipped off everywhere, to the right and to the left; he climbed over into every vale that hid itself behind a hill; he visited the pierced shadow-projection of every row of trees; he laid himself down at the feet of a more than commonly beautiful flower, and refreshed himself with pure love by its spirit, without breaking its body; he was the travelling-companion of the powdered butterfly, and observed his burying himself in his flower, and the hedge-sparrow he followed through the bushes to her brooding-cell and nursery; he let himself be spell-bound in the circle which a bee drew around him, and quietly suffered himself to be immured in the shaft of his own nosegay; he exercised upon every village which the motley landscape held up to him the right of way, and loved best to meet the children, whose days played even like his hours— But men he avoided.... ~Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography, translated from German by Charles T. Brooks, 1865

Adults are always so busy with the dull and dusty affairs of life which have nothing to do with grass, trees, and running streams. ~The Little Grey Men by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford), 1942

If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere. ~Vincent Van Gogh

All I want is to stand in a field

and to smell green,

to taste air,

to feel the earth want me,

Without all this concrete

hating me.

~Phillip Pulfrey, from Love, Abstraction and other Speculations, www.originals.net

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence. ~Alfred Billings Street

There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon. ~Alice Meynell

With innovation and technology, seems we have forgotten to cherish the true beauty the world has to offer. ~A.C. Van Cherub, 2008

Over our manhood bend the skies;

Against our fallen and traitor lives

The great winds utter prophecies;

With our faint hearts the mountain strives,

Its arms outstretched, the druid wood

Waits with its benedicite

And to our age’s drowsy blood

Still shouts the inspiring sea.

~James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal

Nature holds all the answers — go outside and ask some questions — open your heart and listen to the response! ~Amethyst Wyldfyre, AnswersFromYourAngels.com

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower. ~Alan C. Kay

Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own Affairs than we. ~Michel de Montaigne, “Of Experience,” translated from French by Charles Cotton

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws. ~Michel de Montaigne, “Of Experience,” translated from French by Charles Cotton

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. ~Michael Pollan, Second Nature, 1991

Nature will not be admired by proxy. ~Winston Churchill

If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand. ~Buddha

The spiritual quality of earth: eternally pregnant and containing in its fertility the unwritten cipher of cosmic lore. ~Frieda Harris

Say, care-worn man,

Whom Duty chains within the city walls,

Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays

The fresh wind o’er thy sickly brow, when free

To tread the springy turf,— to hear the trees

Communing with the gales,—to catch the voice

Of waters, gushing from their rocky womb,

And singing as they wander...

Spring-hours will come again, and feelings rise

With dewy freshness o’er thy wither’d heart.

~Robert Montgomery, “Beautiful Influences,” A Universal Prayer; Death; A Vision of Heaven; and A Vision of Hell; &c. &c., 1829

      But when he had thus for some hours wandered on, with drinking eye and absorbing heart, through pearl-strings of bedewed web-work, through humming vales, over singing hills, and when the violet-blue sky peacefully joined itself to the smoking heights and to the dark woods, rising like garden-walls behind each other,—when Nature opened all the pipes of the stream of life, and when all her fountains leaped up, and, flashing, played into each other, painted over by the sun,—then was Victor, who went through these flying streams with a rising and thirsty heart, lifted and softened by them; then did his heart swim, trembling like the sun’s image in the infinite ocean....

      Then did flower, meadow, and grove dissolve into a dim immensity, and the color-grains of Nature melted away into a single broad flood, and over the glimmering flood stood the Infinite One as a sun, and in it, as a reflected sun, the human heart.—

      All was one; all hearts grew to one greatest heart; a single life throbbed; the blooming pictures, the growing statues, the dusty clod of earth, and the infinite blue vault became the beholding face of an immeasurable soul.

      ~Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography, translated from German by Charles T. Brooks, 1865

I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn. ~W.H. Hudson, The Book of a Naturalist, 1919

The dance of the palm trees, the oceans calling, the first rays of sun and heaven is here. ~Mike Dolan, www.hawaiianlife.com

Innovative capitalists have tried to rewrite nature, but to no avail. ~Terri Guillemets

I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time. ~Emily Dickinson

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. ~John Burroughs

A setting sun still whispers a promise for tomorrow. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com

Any man that walks the mead

In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find

A meaning suited to his mind.

~Alfred Tennyson

What a type of happy family is the family of the sun! with what order, with what harmony, with what blessed peace, do his children the planets move around him, shining with light which they drink in from their parent’s in at once upon him and on one another! ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

~William Wordsworth

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. ~Henry David Thoreau

...The woods, the lawns, the heaths supply

Lessons from Nature to the heart....

~Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806), “The Horologe of the Fields”

The attraction of variety, contrast, is always invigorating. Nature does not for long allow a sameness of beauty to prevail. ~Virginia Garland, "The Rain," Out West: A Magazine of the Old Pacific and the New, February 1908

The natural alone is permanent. Fantastic idols may be worshipped for a while; but at length they are overturned by the continual and silent progress of Truth, as the grim statues of Copan have been pushed from their pedestals by the growth of forest-trees, whose seeds were sown by the wind in the ruined walls. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale, 1849

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise. ~George Washington Carver

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. ~John Lubbock

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough to pay attention to the story. ~Linda Hogan

...but when

The Spirit speaks,—or beauty from the sky

Descends into my being,—when I hear

The storm-hymns of the mighty ocean roll,

Or thunder sound,—the champion of the storm!—

Then I feel envy for immortal words,

The rush of living thought; oh! then I long

To dash my feelings into deathless verse,

That may administer to unborn time,

And tell some lofty soul how I have lived

A worshipper of Nature and of Thee!

~Robert Montgomery, “Death,” A Universal Prayer; Death; A Vision of Heaven; and A Vision of Hell; &c. &c., 1829

Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes — every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. ~Orison Swett Marden

Nature rejuvenates so quickly, so completely. Though we often view ourselves otherwise, we are nature. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com

Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill,

Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

~Rupert Brooke

Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. ~e.e. cummings

I walked barefoot — the only way to walk on a muddy road. ~Laurie Gough, “Light on a Moonless Night”

A wise man can do no better than to turn from the churches and look up through the airy majesty of the wayside trees with exultation, with resignation, at the unconquerable unimplicated sun. ~Llewelyn Powys, The Pathetic Fallacy

[T]hro’ this Air, this Ocean, and this Earth,

All Nature quick, and bursting into birth.

Above, how high progressive life may go?

Around how wide? how deep extend below?

Vast Chain of Being! which from God began,

Ethereal Essence, Spirit, Substance, Man,

Beast, Bird, Fish, Insect! what no Eye can see,

No Glass can reach! from Infinite to Thee!

From Thee to Nothing....

From Nature’s Chain whatever Link you strike,

Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike....

All are but parts of one stupendous Whole:

Whose Body Nature is, and God the Soul.

~Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. ~Eleonora Duse

Nature, in her blind search for life, has filled every possible cranny of the earth with some sort of fantastic creature. ~Joseph Wood Krutch

And in the development of these [mountains] Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring harmoniously in united strength, they crushed and ground and wore away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time developed and fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and dale and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty.... And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast job of rock-work, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds.... Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work. ~John Muir, “The Sierra Nevada,” The Mountains of California

May your search through Nature lead you to yourself. ~Author Unknown

I’m terribly sorry, but nature is not always family friendly. ~Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo video game) written by Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka, and Toshihiro Kawabata

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience”

[A]nd now I might

As happy be as earth is beautiful...

~Edward Thomas (1878-1917), “October”

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620

Ah, if he could have plunged up into the clouds, so as to sweep thereon through the undulating heavens over the boundless earth!—ah, if he could have floated with the flower-fragrance over the flowers,—could have streamed with the wind over the summits, through the woods! ~Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography, translated from German by Charles T. Brooks, 1865

Beneath our feet a fairy pathway flows,

The grass still glitters in the summer breeze,

The dusky wood, and distant copse appear,

And that lone stream, upon whose chequer’d face

We mused, when noon-rays made the pebbles gleam,

Is mirror’d to the mind: though all around

Be rattling hoofs and roaring wheels, the eye

Is wand’ring where the heart delights to dwell.

~Robert Montgomery, “Beautiful Influences,” A Universal Prayer; Death; A Vision of Heaven; and A Vision of Hell; &c. &c., 1829

All the uglinesses of the world can best be forgotten in the beauty of nature! ~Mehmet Murat ildan

There is not a creature unacquainted with gratification, in some shape or another. All derive it from the circumstances amid which they exist, which fact quietly suggests to us that the purest and most lasting pleasures are to be found at our very feet,— that they are not necessarily the fruit of toil and outlay, but that they flow to us out of the very nature of things, if we will but be content with what is simple and genuine.... The foot that is familiar with the grass belongs usually to a man of lighter heart than he whose soles seldom wander from the pavement; and the best elixir vitæ is a run, as often as we can contrive it, amid the sweets of new and lovely scenery, where nature sits, fresh from the hand of the Creator, almost chiding us for our delay. ~Leo Hartley Grindon, “Insects,” The Little Things of Nature: Considered Especially in Relation to the Divine Benevolence, 1865

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price. ~Napoleon Hill

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,

Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers...

~Robert Herrick

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. ~John Fowles

Sunshine has no budget, the sea no red tape. ~Terri Guillemets

[H]e ran, he stopped—he dipped his glowing face into the cloud of blossoming bushes, and would fain lose himself in the humming world between the leaves; he pressed the scratched face into the deep, cooling grass, and hung delirious on the breast of the immortal mother of Spring. ~Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography, translated from German by Charles T. Brooks, 1865

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite. ~Bertrand Russell

...How sublime

Upon a time-blanch’d cliff to muse, and, while

The eagle glories in a sea of air,

To mingle with the scene around!—Survey

The sun-warm heaven...

~Robert Montgomery, “Beautiful Influences,” A Universal Prayer; Death; A Vision of Heaven; and A Vision of Hell; &c. &c., 1829

And after half a mile’s ride through a beautiful grove, they emerged into a little clearing, which seemed to Bessie’s astonished eyes like a patch of beauty dropped from heaven. In the centre stood a small log house, so overrun with clinging vines that it seemed at first but a green and flowery mound. To the south of it a little garden stretched away in natural terraces; on the east a small, but luxuriant fruit orchard reared its graceful young trees, whose branches even thus early in the season hung low with their promise of gold and crimson harvest. To the west a meadow, soft and mossy as an English lawn, sloped down to a silvery brook, whose birthplace was in the rocky hill, a little to the north, down whose steep bank its pure waters came leaping and singing, with bright rainbows sparkling ever about its fairy pathway. Back of the rustic lodge, a cool, dim, but magnificent forest stretched away till its long aisles met the feet of hoary mountains which completely shut in the little nook from the great world beyond. ~Mrs. Caroline A. Soule, “The Tory’s Niece,” c.1858

How many stanzas in the springtime breeze?

How plenty the raindrops? As He doth please.

There is no meter and there is no rhyme,

Yet God’s poems always read in perfect time.

~Terri Guillemets

Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man. ~George Wherry, Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot, 1896

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. ~Henry David Thoreau, journal, 1856 January 5th

November’s days are thirty:

November’s earth is dirty,

Those thirty days, from first to last;

And the prettiest things on ground are the paths....

Few care for the mixture of earth and water,

Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,

Straw, feather, all that men scorn,

Pounded up and sodden by flood,

Condemned as mud.

~Edward Thomas (1878-1917), “November”

The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven. ~William Channing

Once you have heard the lark, known the swish of feet through hill-top grass and smelt the earth made ready for the seed, you are never again going to be fully happy about the cities and towns that man carries like a crippling weight upon his back. ~Gwyn Thomas

The world is a sunny success. ~Terri Guillemets

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature’s way. ~Aristotle

A wee child toddling in a wonder world.... I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan. ~Zitkala-Sa

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

~William Wordsworth, “The Tables Turned,” 1798

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. ~St. Bernard

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

~William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. ~John Burroughs

Nature is the art of God. ~Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1635

The color of the mountains is Buddha’s body; the sound of running water is his great speech. ~Dōgen

The moon quotes the sun, the rivers quote the trees, and trees quote the breeze. ~Terri Guillemets

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Nature never goes out of style. ~Anonymous

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me. ~Thomas Jefferson

Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly, chaotic and complicated. But if it’s like that, then I want out. ~Steven Weinberg

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~John Burroughs