When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.

What is a farm but a mute gospel?

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

I mean, Hawaii is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful places.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.

I couldn’t take pictures of green rolling hills.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

The United States is afraid of China; it is not a military threat to anyone and is the least aggressive of all the major military powers.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Nature does nothing in vain.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

The dispersal of juniper seeds is effected by the plum and cherry plan of hiring birds at the cost of their board, and thus obtaining the use of a pair of extra good wings.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

If I see a mountain, I just pick up and hike it.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.