Quotes About Nature

The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.

A man's heart away from nature becomes hard; lack of respect for growing, living things soon leads to a lack of respect for humans too.

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too.

Never rail at the storms, the furious winds, the biting frosts and snows...Bright days and dark days are both expressions of the great mystery.

The Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that a lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to a lack of respect for humans, too.

There was no such thing as emptiness in the world. Even in the sky there were no vacant places. Everywhere there was life, visible and invisible, and every object possessed something that would be good for us to have also—even to the very stones.

...creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a forest floor newly swept by rain.

Witchcraft is all about living to the heights and depths of life as a way of worship.

War-waging and peace-making are as old as ants and apes.

A rose is a rose, but it is also a robin and a rabbit.

Florestas inteiras respiram em uníssono.

Our bodies, minds, and spirits stand in ancient communion with the soil.

Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. —Francis of Assisi

Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world– fresh vision that, though it is avian, can accompany you home and alter your life. They will do this for you even if you don't know their names– though such knowing is a thoughtful gesture. They will do this for you if you watch them.

This is one of the blessings of the urban nature project: without the overtly magnificent to stop us in our tracks, we must seek out the more subversively magnificent. Our sense of what constitutes wildness is expanded, and our sense of wonder along with it.

With my new habit of carrying binoculars everywhere, I feel imbued with a readiness to see, an attitude that my life itself is a kind of field trip. The urban naturalist has the terrific luxury of stepping out her door and into "the field," without long rides or carpools, or putting money in for gas and Dairy Queen. When does the field trip being? Whenever we start paying attention.

As we work to know the life that surrounds us, we stand in a lineage of naturalists — past, present, and even future. We join the "cloud of witnesses" who refuse to let the more-than-human world pass unnoticed.

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.

That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.

The Busy Road" I am so used to it by now that when the traffic falls silent, I think a storm is coming.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: that Scotland has so few trees.

Cat, gray tabby, calm, watches large, black ant. Man, rapt, stands staring at cat and ant. Ant advances along path. Ant halts, baffled. Ant back-tracks fast—straight at cat. Cat, alarmed, backs away. Man, standing, staring, laughs. Ant changes path again. Cat, calm again, watches again.

But at other times, I sit here reading in the afternoon, a myrtle in my buttonhole, and there are such beautiful passages in the book that I think I have become beautiful myself.

I am happy the leaves are growing large so quickly. Soon they will hide the neighbor and her screaming child.