Quotes About Nature

If Mr. Darwin were to be believed, then it was from the timeless dapple of the forest's canopy that men had first descended, and it was the forest's roots that drank men's bodies when they died, returned their vital salts back to the prehistoric treetops in gold elevator cages made of sap.

Ladies and gentleman! You've read about it in the newspapers! Now, shudder as you observe, before your very eyes, that most rare and tragic of nature's mistakes! I give you...the average man!!

The fascinating and eccentric concept of Arcturan "back-rays", beams of special light that strive to reunite with their own source, is propped up by the observation that there must be light that pulls as well as light that pushes, or else "how would flowers contrive to twist their heads round after the sun?

Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

Indeed, there is something in this valley, some spirit and some life, and much to talk about in the huts. Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

I've never lifted weights in my life," Shudder responded. "My muscle mass is a natural part of my being genetically superior to you.

Aqua Quorum

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.

These palms are greater than Versailles,for no man made them.

what I preferred was not statues but the bird in the statue's hair.

There is at the heart of Romanticism an urge to withdraw into oneself in order to then transcend the boundaries of that self and connect with nature and the larger order.

When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam.

The fundamental difference between civilized and indigenous ways of being is that for even the most open-minded of the civilized, listening to the natural world is a metaphor. For traditional indigenous peoples it is not a metaphor; it is how you relate to the real world.

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.

You may come to believe that the world cannot survive without your interference, while the truth is that the world cannot survive your arrogant interference.

That's what we're afraid of. The wild. Those we can't buy. Those we can't threaten. Those we can't domesticate. Those we can't control.

Isolation leads to psychopathology. Isolated from the rest of nature, isolated from each other by walls of fear, isolated from our own bodies, and isolated most of all from our own horrifying experience, is it any wonder that we are all crazy?

Our lawns manifest our cultural desire: they are static, they are artificial, and they are kept sexually immature.

Twelve thousand years ago, the war against the earth began. In nine places,2 people started to destroy the world by taking up agriculture. Understand what agriculture is: In blunt terms, you take a piece of land, clear every living thing off it—ultimately, down to the bacteria—and then plant it for human use. Make no mistake: agriculture is biotic cleansing.

Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.

It's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

We have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.