In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

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

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

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.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

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

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

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

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

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

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

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.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

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.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.

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

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

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

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

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.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.