A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

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.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Never find fault with the absent.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

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

I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

The only thing you ever have is now.

There’s people that appreciate what I do; there’s people that criticize it.

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.

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Let go of yesterday.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.

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.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.

Do every act of your life as if it were your last.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

Sometimes I just sit still and enjoy God’s presence.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Understand, our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They’ve got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

Look folks, we know who built this country and we know who is going to rebuild it. It’s you. Instead of vilifying you, we should be thanking you. We owe you.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

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.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious.

I try to live what I teach. A lot of things come against us in life, but we should try to find something to be grateful for, and see each day as a gift.

Find joy and solace in the simple, and cultivate your utopia by feeling the Tao in every cubic inch of space.

It’s cool to be recognised by your peers.

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

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Each day provides its own gifts.