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

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.

I am two with nature.

When you’re outside, and everything is highland, it’s like nature has its own sound, and that’s one of my favorite sounds. I really loved sitting still silently outside, in a tree or in a bush, to just think.

I’m not looking to get away from anything. I like what I’ve done. I like what I get to do and I enjoy working with my friends. I loved those movies, but this is incredible.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

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.

Naturally, there are times when every woman likes to be flattered… to feel she is the most important thing in someone’s world. Only a man can paint this picture.

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

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

Tell your wife often how terrific she looks.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.

Friends applaud, the comedy is over.

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.

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.

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

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.

‚O sleep, O gentle sleep,‘ I thought gratefully, ‚Nature’s soft nurse!‘

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

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!

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

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.