The extreme weakness of quantum gravitational effects now poses some philosophical problems; maybe nature is trying to tell us something new here: maybe we should not try to quantize gravity.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

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.

I was definitely very much a country boy.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit – the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine.

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

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

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

The Planck satellite may detect the imprint of the gravitational waves predicted by inflation. This would be quantum gravity written across the sky.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

The dispersal of juniper seeds is effected by the plum and cherry plan of hiring birds at the cost of their board, and thus obtaining the use of a pair of extra good wings.

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

I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Nature is not human hearted.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

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.

I love the sea.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

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

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

The earth laughs in flowers.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

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.

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.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

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

Anger is certainly a kind of baseness, as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns: children, women, old folks, sick folks.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

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

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it’s a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

I am two with nature.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

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

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

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

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent.

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.