Quotes About Nature

I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief.

All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman's silence receiving the river's grace, the gardener's musing on rows....

Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.

The wildness of the soil that we call fertility begins to diminish, and the soil itself begins to flee from us in water and wind.

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.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation. (pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts....Practice resurrection.

The birch remains. Never harm it.

I spent the next two hours down there, first sitting in the sand, sifting and swirling, watching the grains fall from the webs of my dusty hands and then walking down by the water, collecting those little pieces of beach glass. There were more of them than I thought. They were surprisingly strong. I tried to snap one in half to see if the inside was still shiny and clear like regular glass, but it wouldn't break. Its scuffy exterior was like scar tissue. (67)

As we ate, I watched the waves crashing and thought about the erosion, the turning of rock into sand, and how long it takes to see any difference in the coastline even though it's constantly being worked on. (167)

New Season No coats today. Buds bulge on chestnut trees, And on the doorstep of a big, old house A young man stands and plays his flute. I watch the silver notes fly up And circle in the blue sky above the traffic, Travelling where they will. And suddenly this paving-stone Midway between my front door and the bus stop Is a starting point. From here I can go anywhere I choose.

The violent contrast between the hot season and the monsoon makes the soil ricochet between swampy in one season and hard, parched, and cracked in another.

whether or not people get the gods that they deserve, they tend to get the gods (and demons) that their animals deserve—

bees in Indian love poetry are said to form the bowstring of the god of lust and to plunge deep inside the flowers that ooze with sap even as the rutting elephant's temples ooze with musk.

the bee perishes because his lust for the lotus stupefies him and makes him stick to her even in death.

And when he [the author of the universe] had compounded the whole, he divided it up into as many souls as there are stars, and allotted each soul to a star. And mounting them on their stars, as if on chariots, he showed them the nature of the universe and told them the laws of their destiny. - "Timaeus" by Plato 427-347 B.C.

We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us.

When I was little, I used to run out into the rain and let the water run all over me. Then one day I saw lightning split a tree nearly in half. That pretty much took the joy out of prancing around in thunderstorms.

Honey, men are wimps. Why do you think it's women who have the babies?

Men are wimps . Why do you think women have the babies?

I wrote my first poem about a bunny. 'Bunny, bunny, hop hop hop. White and soft like a little mop.