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.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

The astronomer will believe that the most erratic comet will yet accomplish its journey and revisit our sphere; but we give up those for lost who have not wandered one-half the distance from the centre of light and life.

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

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

That was the first time I saw a horse start from a kneeling position!

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting: the part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

What is a farm but a mute gospel?

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

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.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It’s a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.

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.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

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

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

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

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

We become what we repeatedly do.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

I love the sea.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

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.

I’ve been singing Shakira songs in front of my bathroom mirror into my hairbrush forever. It’s like a daily routine.

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

Getting out of bed is like the foundation of the discipline, and I think it carries over into everything else.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Even if you’re happy with the life you’ve chosen, you’re still curious about the other options.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

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

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

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‚Eureka!‘ but ‚That’s funny…‘

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Many admire, few know.