Quotes About Nature

Viewed as a whole, a forest radiates beauty, serenity and safety. Viewed from within, misplaced focus reaps the fabricated chaos of trees.

For most people, we often marvel at the beauty of a sunrise or the magnificence of a full moon, but it is impossible to fathom the magnitude of the universe that surrounds us.

Lifted up into this holy realm, on the white crown of the magic peak, we too stand there, as moved, as lost in rapture, as the kneeling, praying pilgrims. And as we watch the miracle of the morning unfold, each of us, after his own fashion, gives thanks to the Master Hand that made the beauty and the wonder of the world.

Now, personally, I like a car with some sort of character.

Howsoever [the unfortunate voyage] proved lamentable and fatall to the actors, [it] may yet prove pleasing to the readers: it being an itch in our natures to delight in newnes and varietie, be the subject never so grievous.

There is something in the first gray streaks stretching along the eastern horizon and throwing an indistinct light upon the face of the deep, which combines with the boundlessness and unknown depth of the sea around, and gives one a feeling of loneliness, of dread, and of melancholy foreboding, which nothing else in nature can. This gradually passes away as the light grows brighter, and when the sun comes up, the ordinary monotonous sea day begins.

I love the capital. The wind on the health might call for a time, but the facile glitter of the city was the stronger. Self-esteem, I suppose, is one cause; for in the city, work of man, one is somebody, feet on the pavement, suit on the body, anybody's equal and nobody's fool; but in the country, work of god, one is nothing, less than the earth, the birds, and the trees; one is discordant - a blot.

Lao Tse told them to relax and learn from the life of a plant. It doesn't have to be told how to do its thing. It follows its nature.

Highlands of Scotland:

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! …5

She's somewhere in the sunlight strong, / Her tears are in the falling rain, / She calls me in the wind's soft song, / And with the flowers she comes again.

What long-dead face makes here the grass so green? On what earth-buried bosom do we lean? Ah! love, when we in turn are grass and flowers, By what kind eyes to come shall we be seen?

The quiet troubling of the river, and the clean, washed stones, and the green all about, and the trees trying to drown their shadows, and the mountain going up and up behind, there is beautiful it was.

So I kissed her, and went out, and up on top of the mountain to have peace, for I had a grudge that was savage with heat against everybody, and only up on top there, where it was green, and high, and blue, and quiet, with only the winds to come at you, was a place of rest, where the unkindness of man for man could be forgotten, and I could wait for God to send calm and wisdom, and O, a blessed ease.

An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.

The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.

Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.

We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.

Time in nature is not leisure time; it's an essential investment in our chidlren's health (and also, by the way, in our own).

Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing?

Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood.

One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.

Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination.