When you’re outside, and everything is highland, it’s like nature has its own sound, and that’s one of my favorite sounds. I really loved sitting still silently outside, in a tree or in a bush, to just think.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

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.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.

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

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

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

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Never get out of bed before noon.

I mean, Hawaii is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful places.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

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.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

Life is precious.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

Let go of yesterday.

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

The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

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.

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.

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

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

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.

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.

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.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

Find joy and solace in the simple, and cultivate your utopia by feeling the Tao in every cubic inch of space.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

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

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

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.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.