Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

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.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it’s a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

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

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

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

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Success is always dangerous, and we need to be alert and avoid becoming the victims of our own success. Will we influence the world for Christ, or will the world influence us?

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

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

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

All art is but imitation of nature.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

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.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.

Faith crosses every border and touches every heart in every nation.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

Whether full-time missionaries or members, we should all be good examples of the believers in Jesus Christ.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.