Quotes About Nature

Ex-governor Walter Hickel, decrying the interference of wolf advocates (many of them Outsiders) in the issue two decades ago, put it best, with this unintentionally comical, landmark statement: "You can't just let nature run wild.

He squinted thoughtfully, then grinned. "Actually, I thought having him around was pretty cool. People, not the wolf, were the real management issue, and for the most part, they acted in a respectful and responsible manner.

Research and eyewitness anecdotes show that mated wolves do indeed form till-death-do-us-part monogamous bonds that equal any in the animal kingdom and put many human commitments to shame.

Sacrifice is the movement of violent liberation from servility, the collapse of transcendence. Inhibiting the sacrificial relapse of isolated being is the broad utilitarianism inherent to humanity, correlated with a profane delimitation from ferocious nature that finds its formula in theology. In its profane aspect, religion is martialled under a conception of God; the final guarantor of persistent being, the submission of (ruinous) time to reason, and thus the ultimate principle of utility.

Nature, far from being logical, 'is perhaps entirely the excess of itself', smeared ash and flame upon zero, and zero is immense.

I fish better with a lit cigar; some people fish better with talent.

The soul secure in her existence smiles at the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age and nature sink in years, but thou shall flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amid the war of elements, the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds.

May we all be so fortunate to understand the grace of nature, and to have a profound respect for its allure and natural offerings. For in nature, beauty resides infinitely, and is worthy of being untouched with certain indebtedness.

nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book...

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No furniture, no light fittings, no carpet, no bodies. Not a single body. Nothing but the million ducks, the three million ducklings and a window.

she would always be, at the very best, a dewdrop on life's river bank.

Complacency's like a disease to wild things.

He was just a boy. She was just a girl. It was biologically determined that things would be complicated.

The cloud cover was heavy and multilayered, shades of slate blue and silver, pearl and charcoal, like a sketch washed with watercolour.

The world lit up like a silent photograph, flat and grainy, limning the tree stark as a charcoal slash against a parchment sky. Lightning exploded like bluewhite cats-o'-nine-tails until sound rolled and cracked and splintered and Marghe could no longer tell if it was the ground shaking or her muscles; she felt deaf and blind and exposed to her core.

Beeches were rare north of the Humber, and she loved the way they whispered in the wind, like women before they fell asleep.

This country's bones and flesh are made of rock and its blood is the ice-cold water of glacier melt.

I stood there for a long time after he bumped his way over the turf and down the track, until the smell of his exhaust had faded into the trees and soil, and I could hear nothing but the buds. The air smelled like rain.

When she left it was the last full swell of summer, when apples hung formed but still green from the trees.

More than once, they wrapped in furs and cloaks and walked through the garden in the moonlight, still talking. Sometimes they just walked in silence, and Marghe thought she could hear Thenike's heart.

She let the ebb and flow of the hall wash over her, much as she sometimes sat behind bracken at the edge of a clearing or reeds by the edge of a pool.

Hild had forgotten how Begu's thoughts flocked like starlings, flicking this way then that.

She shot up like one of the weeds in the barley field and grew tender breast buds.

A spider only has to set at the edge of a puddle to catch the fly that dives to drink. A shrew has only to watch in turn for the spider. For the fly most come to the edge to drink, and the spider must follow the fly. Fate goes ever as it must.