Quotes About Nature

Modern western man has some basic misconceptions about the nature of happiness. The origin of the word is instructive: happiness stems from the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens.

How can we hope, after all, to see a tree or rock or clear north sky if we do not adopt a little of their mode of life, a little of their time? ...if the time it takes to cross space is a way by which we define it, then to arrive at a view of space "in no time" is to have denied its reality...

human beings are compelled to massacre animals unceasingly, because human beings are simply unable to survive, for the most part, on apples and nuts. - Ravissante

In the end I came to see that the true prophet of the modern world was Samuel Butler: when he suggested that the machine was an evolutionary development, destined to supersede man as the dominant species and reduce him to greenfly status, the status of machine-minder, homo mechanicus instead of homo sapiens ; and to modify his nature accordingly.

Watching gardeners label their plants I vow with all beings to practice the old horticulture and let plants identify me.

When you reflect on the infinite number of happenstances that coalesced to produce you, then you understand how unique, how precious, how sacred you really are. Your task is to cultivate that precious, sacred nature and help it to flower.

Once one thinks like a mountain, the whole world is converted. All things confirm me. Then I sit on dojo cushions that do not move. There is no controller and no one to control.

Mystery is the unknown in which we live. It is our nature. Mystification is the exploitation of mystery.

You and I come forth as possibilities of essential nature, alone and independent as stars, yet reflecting and being reflected by all things. My life and yours are the unfolding realization of total aloneness and total intimacy.

Clover is incapable of not nurturing. It can't do anything but nurture. Shakyamuni is capable of not nurturing. With a poisonous thought, he is a poisonous person. With an enlightened thought, he is an enlightened person. With his great realization, he is unlikely to slip back into poisonous ways, but he could, for he is human.

Nature gave men two ends -- one to sit on, and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.

I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.

The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?

When Spring has sprung... Spring with it!

the automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single "cheep-cheep" noise.

Do you consider yourself a helpful person?" Following brief reflection, nearly everyone answered yes. In that privileged moment—after subjects had confirmed privately and affirmed publicly their helpful natures—the researchers pounced, requesting help with their survey. Now 77.3 percent volunteered.

ethology—the study of animals in their natural settings.

In parallel with the development of my interests in technical gadgetry I began to acquire a profound love of and respect for the natural world which motivates my scientific thinking to this day.

A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.

I mean, there is amazing amount of oil and gas and other resources out beneath the sea. It's staggering.

Flowers, like cats, were too involved in their own intricate magnificence to minister to her self-love.

God is not one more intelligible object among many, not a supreme existing thing among other existing things, not simply the highest value alongside other ethical goods. Rather, God is that which is intelligible in itself, that which exists through the power of its own essence, that which is good by its very nature.

God is a great gathering force, for by his very nature he is love; but the devil's work is to sunder, to set one against the other.