The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.

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

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

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.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.

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.

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.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

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.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Most Africans don’t get to see these wild animals at all. Once they see and learn about them, they are much more likely to become involved in protecting the environment.

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.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

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

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

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

Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and also in organizations.

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.

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.

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.

Say ‚Toronto‘ or ‚Ontario,‘ and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.

Gardening is not a rational act.

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

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

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.

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

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

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

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.

Even if the economy crashes, we will still burn oil.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

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

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

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.