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.

I’m crepuscular.

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?

All art is but imitation of nature.

We moralize among ruins.

We’re one of the only animals in the world that don’t really think of ourselves as animals, but we are animals, and we must respect our fellow animals.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

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

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Gardening is not a rational act.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

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.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

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.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

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

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

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

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Every time I plant a seed, He say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.

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

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

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

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

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

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed – chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

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’m living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams – they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do – they all contain truths.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.