We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

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

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

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.

A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

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

Nature has always had more force than education.

The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It’s a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that’s what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

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

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

I’ve actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don’t mean hybrid, I mean fully electric.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

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

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

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

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.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

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

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

The threat to the planet is us. It’s actually not a threat to the planet – it’s a threat to us.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

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

The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we’re not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.

Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

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.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer – our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation.

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

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.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

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.

The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it’s cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that’s the realm in which we should be playing.

I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

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.