Quotes About Nature

One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb.

She breathed in the scent of lemon blossoms, inspired by how their citrus sweetness mingled with fresh ocean air. Closing her eyes, she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, tasting a faint saltiness in the moisture laden breeze. She imagined how dark, rich chocolate filled with the brightness of a lemon filling and dusted with chunky sea salt might taste. Delicious, she decided.

The rose: though its petals are easily bruised, it blooms with exuberance. What power the rose possesses; the merest hint of a blossom conjures the deepest memory. At dawn, roses must be picked quickly, for they lose half their essence—the perfumer's treasure—by the high sun of noon. —DB

They passed a crystal vase of luscious yellow roses, which burst from tight salmon buds into golden, creamy yellow blossoms tinged with delicate strokes of subtle peach.

In a Kenya game park once I saw a family of wart-hogs waddling ungainly and in a tremendous hurry across the grass. Contemptuous though I am of those who find animals comic…still I could not help laughing at this quaint spectacle. My African companion rightly rebuked me. "You should not laugh at them," he said. "They are beautiful to each other.

To be an artist it is not necessary to make a living from our creations. Nor is it necessary to have work hanging in fine museums or the praise of critics. To be an artist it is necessary to live with our eyes wide open, to breath in the colors of mountain and sky, to know the sound of leaves rustling, the smell of snow, the texture of bark. To be an artist is to notice every beautiful and tragic thing, to cry freely, to collect experience and shape it into forms that others can share.

Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear.

Aunt Flo's love is not a soft thing, I think, but something hard and unyielding, which can be good or bad.

She couldn't see the mathematical beauty in a leaf, the miracle in a seed that becomes a seedling, the absolute wonder that is the earth and the sea and the sky. He would try to talk to her of these things and receive only dismissive comments in reply. He learned from her to keep his mouth shut.

De mensen zijn zo consequent als een toverbal en zo voorspelbaar als een tsunami en soms deugen ze opeens.

Voordat ze in mijn boekenkasten verdwijnen leef ik tussen stapels boeken als tussen bloeiende struiken.

Waarschijnlijk omdat de dood de enige ziekte is waar we niet mee besmet hoeven te worden, waarvan we de bacil al vanaf de geboorte bij ons dragen.

Het is een mooie kringloop, je moet er alleen niet een zin in willen ontdekken. Dat is misschien de enige les die er te leren valt. Gewoon als een blad naar de aarde kunnen tuimelen zonder dat je vindt dat je moet denken dat je vleugeltjes krijgt en weer omhoogvliegt het heelal in. De perzik van onsterfelijkheid is een aardig verzinsel, maar die vrucht heeft beslist geen pit. Het is maar een ezelsbruggetje naar de dood.

Niet bang zijn voor de natuur. Dat is ook maar een natuurverschijnsel.

"I shall soon be rested," said Fanny; "to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."

One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

What are men to rocks and mountains?

a latent belief in the spontaneity of nature.

we are much better at admitting that humans infect nature than we are at admitting that nonhumanity infects culture, for the latter entails the blasphemous idea that nonhumans—trash, bacteria, stem cells, food, metal, technologies, weather—are actants more than objects. Latour

One must allow that a certain amount of carelessness in one's nature often accomplishes what the will is incapable of doing

The people of the stone houses are gone, whirled like chaff over dry fields, scattered by the war dances of dust devils. what remains — sculpted walls, curved shards, small stores of corn — says little. What we know is that they lived like birds. That from their doorways they looked out and out over shimmering trees into the arms of sky, And that one day, light-boned, weightless as any winged flock before a journey, they rose and flew. —Mesa Verde

Dionysos the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once perceived, then remembered and conceived.

We have seen (p. 71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually perceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image, an imagined Tree Spirit, or "Summer," or Death, a thing never actually seen but conceived.