The extreme weakness of quantum gravitational effects now poses some philosophical problems; maybe nature is trying to tell us something new here: maybe we should not try to quantize gravity.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

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

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.

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

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Prayer is a confession of one’s own unworthiness and weakness.

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

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

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.

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

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

I love the sea.

Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

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

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.

Nature is not human hearted.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and also in organizations.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

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

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

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.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

I couldn’t take pictures of green rolling hills.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Nature does nothing in vain.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

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.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

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.

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

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.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Gardening is not a rational act.

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