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 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.

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

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

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

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

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

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

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

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

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?

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

Gardening is not a rational act.

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?

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

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

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

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

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

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

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

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

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

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

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

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

Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature.

I am two with nature.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

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

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

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

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.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of 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!

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

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

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.

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

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.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

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

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.

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

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.