There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

I read poetry to save time.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

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.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I’ve never had a dislike for men. I’ve been badly treated by some. But I’ve been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend – and he’s a priest.

I think there are things that are based in your own dealings with someone that is a personal dealing, not a public dealing. Because you have personal experiences.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

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.

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.

Walking is man’s best medicine.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

No matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.

When I get married, it’ll be no secret.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

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.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

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.

Young love is wild and outrageous, laughing at moderation and blinding us to common sense.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

If I’d married someone in show business, there’d be too much competition.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Fame may go by and – so long, I’ve had you.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

I always wanted to be loved.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

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.

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it’s almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

Speak low, if you speak love.

Logically, harmony must come from the heart… Harmony very much based on trust. As soon as use force, creates fear. Fear and trust cannot go together.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

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.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

All art is but imitation of nature.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.