Quotes About Nature

One of my best days was when I ... offered [chimp David Greybeard] fruit on my outstretched hand, and he turned his head away. I put my hand closer - and he took the fruit, dropped it, and gently squeezed my hand, which is a chimp reassurance gesture ... We communicated perfectly in a language that predates words.

Trees are living beings. And they have their own personalities... There are the young, eager saplings, all striving with each other... If you put your cheek against one of those, you almost sense the sap rising and the energy.

People say to me so often, 'Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,' and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside.

The harmony of natural law Ã¢â'¬Â¦ reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

I'd like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom, not separated from it.

Any little thing that brings us back into communion with the natural world and the spiritual power that permeates all life will help us to move a little further along the path of human moral and spiritual evolution.

The naturalist," Jane said, "looks for the wonder of nature—she listens to the voice of nature and learns from nature as she tries to understand it. Whereas a scientist is more focused on facts and the desire to quantify. For a scientist, the question is, 'Why is this adaptive? How does it contribute to the survival of the species?

Nature can win if we give her a chance.

I love dogs, not chimps. Some chimps are nice, and some are horrid. I don't actually think of them as animals any more than I think of us as animals, although both of us are.

Sometimes I [longed to be a chimp]... I just wanted to know... what it felt like in the evening to be making a nest and what it felt like to be a female when a big male comes thundering in.

Our guide was in the background saying, 'This whale has forgiven us. She has forgiven us for who we were and is seeing who we are today.

If we live in a society with a reasonable standard of living and some degree of social justice, the generous and peaceful aspects of our nature are likely to prevail; while in a society of racial discrimination and economic injustice, violence will thrive.

I am feeling wonder and awe about this incredible world we live in. And the truth is, we're destroying it before we've even finished learning about it.

We need nature, but nature does not need us.

If only we had listened to the scientists studying zoonotic diseases who have long warned that such a pandemic was inevitable if we continued to disrespect nature and disrespect animals. But their warnings fell on deaf ears. We didn't listen and now we are paying a terrible price.

I am feeling wonder and awe about this incredible world we live in. And the truth is, we're destroying it before we've even finished learning about it. We think we are smarter than nature, but we are not. Our human intellect is amazing, but we must be humble and recognize that there is an even greater intelligence in nature.

a great deal of our onslaught on Mother Nature is not really lack of intelligence but a lack of compassion for future generations and the health of the planet:

It is now clear not only that all the trees in the forest are interconnected below the ground but also that each of the largest and oldest trees serves as a "mother tree," with younger trees growing within her root-fungi network.

And give thanks that we live in such a wonderful, magical, and endlessly fascinating kingdom. The kingdom of the plants.

nature is there, waiting to move in and help to heal herself.

Someone once wondered why it is that if a work of Man is destroyed, it is called vandalism, but if a work of nature, of God, is destroyed it is so often called progress.

One could argue that the human intellect was the greatest mistake in evolution—a mistake that is now threatening all life on the planet.

and some degree of social justice, the generous and peaceful aspects of our nature are likely to prevail; while in a society of racial discrimination and economic injustice, violence will thrive.

The Seed Cathedral.