Quotes About Nature

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

Along with rising and falling water, winter is the province of wind. When the sea-breath and mountain-roar bend the hemlocks of these hills, the birds hang on as best they can.

We look up, if only to see if we're likely to be rained on. The sky calls attention to itself, whether scored by herons, cranes, or wires; illumined by sunsets, Perseids, or ballparks; broken up by the twigwork of oaks or maples, painted in rainbows, or just primed in the pale gray of my '52 Ford. If we are truthful, the sky is never neutral.

Himalayans (blackberries) seize the land, gobbling acres, blanketing banks, consuming abandoned farmhouses and their Studebakers and anything left alone in the rain for five minutes or longer.

That kind of walk is nice when it happens, but I'll take four minutes now and then over being butt-stapled to a chair all day long.

the crushed carcasses of slugs and frogs mixing with the Cretaceous carbons of tar give the road an organic glaze.

This sort of day makes indoor work seem shameful. So working outside, whether in the garden or the woods or on the front porch..., is a sacrament.

I often tell students that we should aspire to be amanuenses to the land: to let the land speak (in all its voices, human and otherwise), then take dictation, and try to get some of the words right. "How do you know when you get the words right?" they ask. "You know," I reply. When we do, the leaves not only speak; they positively sing.

Worship a cabbage white butterfly, or a cabbage root maggot, or a cabbage. For God is all of these equally, or nothing at all: take your pick. A messiah would be better off appearing as a flower- able to turn water into nectar- look there for a miracle! Worship what you will if you must...but the world needs love more than worship. In love lies the only real shelter there is...

How oft,—be witness, Guardian of our days!... The sky besprinkled o'er with rainbow hues, As if angelic wings had wanton'd there;...

...How sublime Upon a time-blanch'd cliff to muse, and, while The eagle glories in a sea of air, To mingle with the scene around!—Survey The sun-warm heaven...

Beneath our feet a fairy pathway flows, The grass still glitters in the summer breeze, The dusky wood, and distant copse appear, And that lone stream, upon whose chequer'd face We mused, when noon-rays made the pebbles gleam, Is mirror'd to the mind: though all around Be rattling hoofs and roaring wheels, the eye Is wand'ring where the heart delights to dwell.

I believe that, seven generations beyond us, those who look back on our time will find that it was the cry of the trees that helped to restart the dreaming and foster the understanding that we must dream not only for ourselves but also for our communities and for all that shares life with us in our fragile bubble of air.

The role of the animal messenger in the dreams of modern city-dwellers is often to recall us to our wild side, and the natural path of our energy.

Where I come from Nobody knows; And where I'm going Everything goes. The wind blows, The sea flows - And nobody knows.

Yellow is the true color of spring, not green; the new grass, the clouds, the misty, sunny air, the sticky buds like little feathers on the trees, all are mixed with yellow tone, with the haze of sun and earth and water. Green is for summer; blue, for fall.

There would be no work on this day. A day no pigs would die.

The wind was as ripe as apples, so full of fall that you could almost bite every breath.

of all the things in the world to see, I reckon the heavens at sundown has got to be my favorite sight. How about you?" "The sky's a good place to look," he said. "And I got a notion it's a good place to go.

Sooner or later, animals will let loose a human trait, as men sometimes behave like a beast.

And if some savage told us of a mag-ical worm that built a little windowless house, slept there a season, thenone day emerged and flew away as a jeweled bird, we'd laugh at suchsuperstition if we'd never seen a butterfly.