Quotes About Nature

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.

Fish, the old man said. Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?

But, thank God, [the fish] are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.

Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive.

Anyone can be a fisherman in May.

Half fish, he said. Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both. But we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined many others. How many did you ever kill, old fish? You do not have that spear on your head for nothing.

They are strong," David said. "But there's a strong wind today and we drink according to the wind.

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.

The best sky was in Italy or Spain and in Northern Michigan in the fall

He thought that he would lie down and think about nothing. Sometimes he could do this. Sometimes he could think about the stars without wondering about them and the ocean without problems and the sunrise without what it would bring.

During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female. 'They are good,' he said. 'They play and make jokes and love one another. They are our brothers like the flying fish.

Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa.

The fish is my friend too, he said aloud. I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.

Then he was sorry for the great fish... How many people will he feed?.. But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course, not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity.

It came very fast and the sun went a dull yellow and then everything was gray and the sky was covered and the cloud came on down the mountain and suddenly we were in it and it was snow.

You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.

Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want him for long He maketh me to lie down in green pastures and there are no green pastures He leadeth me beside still waters and still waters run deep

Everything kills everything else in some way.

Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed. That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought.

Best of all he loved the fall the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods leaves floating on the trout streams and above the hills the high blue windless skies…now he will be a part of them forever.

The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish.