Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

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.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

Desire is the essence of a man.

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.

Nature is not human hearted.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

The earth laughs in flowers.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed – chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

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.

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

Man, all lives matter.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

‚O sleep, O gentle sleep,‘ I thought gratefully, ‚Nature’s soft nurse!‘

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

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

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

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.

Many readers fail to realize this, but ‚The Color Purple‘ is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one’s original God: the earth and nature.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

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.

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.

No sane man will dance.

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

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.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

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.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Nature does nothing in vain.

The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.

This man used to go to school with his dog. Then they were separated. His dog graduated!

Man – a being in search of meaning.

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.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

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

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

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

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

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.

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

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.