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

Delhi means everything to me. This city has given me everything, and I love it.

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.

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.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

Gardening is not a rational act.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.

As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents – electric wave motion – will have the sway.

Nature is not human hearted.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

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

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.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

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

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

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.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

I don’t want flowers or candy or anything like that. I just want somebody to say, ‚Wow, you’ve done a great job.‘

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.

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

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.

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

Water is the driving force of all nature.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

Water’s never clumsy.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

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

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.

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.

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

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

I love the sea.

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.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

Walking is man’s best medicine.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I’m trying to pull out of the ground that doesn’t want to come out? I know I’ll win.

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.

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

The only thing that relaxes me is archery. That’s why I have to have apartments with gardens.

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

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.