The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this.

I have two main hair people I work with. They’re always with me. I’m like, ‚I’m bored! I wanna change my hair!‘ That’s the good thing about a weave. You can do whatever with it.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

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

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

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

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.

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

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.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

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?

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.

Young people can create beautiful things.

What is a farm but a mute gospel?

Nature abhors annihilation.

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

When you’re 25 or 30, you know, you can’t wear lime-green eye shadow anymore.

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.

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.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

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.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

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.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Blushing is the color of virtue.

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

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

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

Girls are soft and pretty.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

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