Quotes About Nature

There is only one realm in which characters defy natural laws and remain the same—the realm of bad writing. And it is the fixed nature of the characters that make the writing bad.

Lamar Underwood

I gave you books. You gave me plants. Books live. Plants die.

Uva uvum vivendo varia fit

He liked to get off by himself, a mile or so from camp, and listen to the country, not the men.

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the little backyard was filled with the little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

Many white men could not trust things unless they could be explained; and yet the most beautiful things, such as the trackless flight of birds, could never be explained.

You are like me, a free man. The sky is your wife.

We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That's the wild for you - it's got its dangers, which is part of the beauty.

woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose.

the seven of them rode for two hours into country that seemed to contain nothing except itself.

He thought living in a place where there were eagles to watch might encourage some pretty good dreams.

When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.

Somewhere along the Rio Concho, he had stopped feeling that he lived in a world where ledgers mattered.

Trees had been so common that it was a shock to ride out on the plains and discover that there was a part of earth where there weren't any.

Looking at her, though, was like looking at the hills. The hills stayed as they were. You could go them, if you had the means, but they extended no greeting.

A sleeping man would miss the best of the evening, and the moonrise as well.

When we finish up with this planet the insects will take over. You may not think it, seeing all this fair land, but the days of the human race are numbered. The insects are waiting their turn.

The vast plain was beautiful, but it had reduced Pea Eye to a scarred wreck.

He behaved like the old ones behaved; the old ones, too, would go to any lengths to learn some useful fact about the animals or the birds. They would figure that someone might need to know those facts; they themselves might not need to, but their children might, or their grandchildren might.

There was something different about her, Jake had to admit. She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met in a woman. Certain mountains were that way, like the Bighorns. The air around them was so clear you could ride toward them for days without seeming to get any closer. And yet, if you kept riding, you would get to the mountains. He was not so sure he would ever get to Lorie. Even when she took him, there was a distance between them.

The coyote was moving purposely; perhaps it smelled the cooking meat too.

In the whole two years of their marriage she had never said anything similar, anything to indicate that she felt their being together was something less than a part of natural law.

Men were odd. One day they were hard, far too hard; the next day they were soft, far too soft. They were like porcupines: prickly on the outside, but with soft bellies.