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

We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace.

The Information Highway intrigues me because I have always been a newshound; I have always been curious about why people believe what they believe.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

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

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

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

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

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

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

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

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

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.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

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.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

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 queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

For greed all nature is too little.

The one thing that ‚Via Dolorosa‘ has is no opinions. To me, curiosity is 50 times as valuable as opinion.

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

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

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

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

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.

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.

Many admire, few know.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

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.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

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

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?

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.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

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.

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

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

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.