Quotes About Nature

Thank God, all you who have a spark of rational piety in your hearts, for the glorious commonplace of earth and sky,—for this cloud-embosomed planet in which you pass your lives.

And now it has risen above the massive and lofty tree, and throws its pleasant shadow down upon the earth—pleasant shadow that paces along the meadows, leaving behind a greater brilliancy on tree, and grass, and hedge, and flower than what, for a moment, it had eclipsed.

The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live.… This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance.

When a farm or a family is stricken, nature destroys what humankind has made. Houses peel and crumble. Tilled fields are subsumed by weeds and grasses. Well-tended orchards become knotted, spectral forests. The earth, given an opening, always reclaims itself and obliterates order—erasing the outward evidence of an agrarian society.

We think it is calm here, or that our storm is the right size.

The earth says have a place, be what that place requires; hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.

On a sandbar sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?

Evening came, a paw, to the gray hut by the river.

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes.

Waiting for God" This morning I breathed in. It had rained early and the sycamore leaves tapped a few drops that remained, while waving the air's memory back and forth over the lawn and into our open window. Then I breathed out. This deliberate day eased past the calendar and waited. Patiently the sun instructed the shadows how to move; it held them, guided their gradual defining. In the great quiet I carried my life on, in again, out again.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it—I breathed it into my ears. Little

Most mornings I get away, slip out the door before light, set forth on the dim, gray road, letting my feet find a cadence that softly carries me on. Nobody is up—all alone my journey begins. Some

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built, when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon.

Love in the Country We live like this: no one but some of the owls awake, and of them only near ones really awake. In the rain yesterday, puddles on the walk to the barn sounded their quick little drinks. The edge of the haymow, all soaked in moonlight, dreams out there like silver music. Are there farms like this where no one likes to live? And the sky going everywhere? While the earth breaks the soft horizon eastward, we study how to deserve what has already been given us

Let my dreams while I'm wide-awake loose. Let me be drowned, baptized, in the light given me. Day comes around, night, fall, winter, spring, summer. Leaves overhead, underfoot. Waves arrive, buffets from friends offended, enemies. Let it all come: this is my way, this is the canoe I'm in. "Adrift

I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.

Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.

Why I Am Happy Now has come, an easy time. I let it roll. There is a lake somewhere so blue and far nobody owns it. A wind comes by and a willow listens gracefully. I hear all this, every summer. I laugh and cry for every turn of the world, its terribly cold, innocent spin. That lake stays blue and free; it goes on and on. And I know where it is.

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north

Did you ever see anybody so disgusting: said lightning to thunder, "never," growled thunder, "let's give him the works.

Later she sat on the ground in the forest between school and home, and spring was so bright and beautiful, the warm air touched her so tenderly, she could almost feel herself changing into a flower. Her light dress felt like petals. "I love everything," she heard herself say. "So do I," a voice answered. Pearl straightened up and looked around. No one was there.

Why did the world go on being so beautiful in spite of the ugliness he had experienced? The lake was beautiful, serenely beautiful. The forest was beautiful, greenly beautiful. Lake and forest, the whole shimmering world was painfully beautiful. He loved this world, but he was too hurt to enjoy it.

T]he conviction grew in him that the earth and the sky knew he was there and also felt friendly; so he was not really alone, and not really entirely lonely.