quotes, quotations and passages on nature

nature 2 - nature 3 - nature 4

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush
of scenery-- air, mountains, trees,
people. I thought, "This is what
it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar

Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

People are incomprehensible without Nature, and Nature is incomprehensible apart from people. For the delicate loveliness of the flower is as much in the human eye as in its own fragile petals, and the splendor of the heavens as much in the imagination that kindles at the touch of their glory as in the shining of countless worlds. Hamilton Wright Mabie

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. John Milton Nature has given the opportunity of happiness to all, knew they but how to use it. Claudian

What riches are ours in the world of nature, from the majesty of the distant peak to the fragile beauty of a tiny flower, and all without cost to us, the beholders! No person is poor who has watched a sunrise or who keeps a mountain in his or her heart. Esther Baldwin York

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four

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Old and new put their stamp on everything in nature. The snowflake
that is now falling is marked by both; the present gives the motion
and color to the flakes; antiquity its form and properties. All things wear
a luster which is the gift of the present and a tarnish of time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense and keep the heart
Awake to love and beauty.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.

Juvenal

When the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds awoke, and
the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble early
rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all people, having reinforced
their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear,
were invited to unattempted adventures.

Henry David Thoreau

Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him
was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people.
To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful, and we were surrounded
with the blessings of the Great Mystery.

Black Elk

I go now to the wilderness to be a part of it; to accept my place
in the world and its place in me; to grow into reality as a tree grows
into the rain, to conform to the Earth as a stream conforms
to the stones of its bed. To live. To aspire. To be.

William Ashworth

The motion felt by a person in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

Henry Bergson

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

May Sarton

There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

Rachel Carson

When we pay attention to nature's music, we find that everything on the earth contributes to its harmony.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Close your eyes. You might try saying. . . something like this:
"The sun is shining overhead. The sky is blue and sparkling.
Nature is calm and in control of the world--and I, as nature's
child, am in tune with the Universe." Or--better still--pray!

Dale Carnegie

There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which
nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can
imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are,
even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless
beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity
of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.

John Ruskin

Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and
experience of that divine mystery, humans cease to be human.

Henry Beston

If you drive nature out with a pitchfork,
she will soon find a way back.

Horace

nature 2 - nature 3 - nature 4

All of nature offers lessons on living, free of charge. One morning
I noticed a dead tree supporting many living things--fungus, vines,
lichen--which taught me that even after death we can continue to
support those who live on. Living trees on our property teach other
lessons. One tree has grown around a barbed wire fence. Another
has grown around a nail, and a third through a chain link fence.
These trees teach me how to accept irritation, absorb the pain and
grow around problems. Nature teaches me how to find my place,
grow toward the sunlight and bypass obstacles. To survive, we must
be able to change in response to whatever is required by the
challenge of the moment. Our bodies know this, but our
minds often rebel when change is necessary.

Bernie S. Siegel

Look deep into nature and you will find the answer to everything.

Albert Einstein

The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder
of the world. . . I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and
the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the
treetops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields
has often comforted me more than the faces of people.
I am in love with this world. . . I have tilled its soil, I have gathered
its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped
what I have sown.
I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters,
crossed its deserts, felt the sting if its frosts, the oppression of its heats,
the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty
and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

John Burroughs

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.

Charles Dickens

Breathing Air: 1874

Every weary person seeking with damaged instinct the high founts of nature, when he or she chances into the mountains, if accustomed to philosophize at all, if not too far gone in civilization, will ask, Whence comes? What is the secret of the mysterious enjoyment felt here--the strange calm, the divine frenzy? Whence comes the annihilation of bonds that seemed everlasting?

Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of the streets--all as part of the natural upgrowth of humans towards the high destiny we hear so much of. I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague.

Go now and then for fresh life--if most of humanity must go through this town stage of development--just as divers hold their breath and come ever and anon to the surface to breathe. . . . Go whether or not you have faith. . . . Form parties, if you must be social, to go to the snow-flowers in winter, to the sun-flowers in summer. . . Anyway, go up and away for life; be fleet!

John Muir
Trails of Wonder

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The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin

Nature is the clearest source of solitude. The greatness of nature
can overwhelm the insignificant chatter by which we measure
most of our days. If you have the wisdom and the courage
to go to nature alone, the larger rhythms, the eternal hum,
will make itself known all the sooner. When you have found it,
it will always be there for you. The peace without will become
the peace within, and you will be able to return to it in your
heart wherever you find yourself.

Kent Nerburn

I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough
to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry
by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

Adeline Knapp

Nature and people are simply part of one another. If we bring
our awareness to what is around us and within us, this becomes
obvious. We cannot be considered separate. The natural world
is at the very heart of our being. If we are willing to listen and pay
attention to nature, we will begin to recognize our innate sense of
connection and belonging. Mindfulness of the natural world will
probably be one of our deepest experiences and our
greatest opportunities to feel truly alive.

Claire Thompson
Mindfulness and the Natural World

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not
see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun
illuminates only the eye of the adult, but shines into the eye and heart
of the child. The lover of nature is the person whose inward and outward
senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit
of infancy even into the era of adulthood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I never knew how soothing trees are--many trees and patches of open
sunlight, and tree presences; it is almost like having another being.

D.H. Lawrence

Articles and book excerpts on nature:

Nourishing Awareness in Each Moment Thich Nhat Hanh
A Supposed Letter from Chief Seattle
The Secret of the Masters--Yours! Asoka Selvarajah

We are all of us cut off from nature, and not only the town dwellers.
It is perhaps important to remember something that we sometimes
forget: that a field is as much a human product as a street. It is only
on the seashore, on the moors, and in a few forests, that we see
nature anything like what it was before man interfered with it. Yet
if we are intellectually and emotionally cut off from nature,
we suffer a loss which is hard to define.

J.B.S. Haldane

nature 2 - nature 3 - nature 4

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the
mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier
meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb
the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow
into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow
their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like autumn leaves. As age
comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed,
but Nature's sources never fail.

John Muir

Nature is not dumb. Humanity is dumb when we can't hear or when
we forget how to communicate with nature. Nature is very much alive.
Intelligent living beings and vibrant energies are all over the planet.

Sun Bear

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of
strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something
infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance
that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

Rachel Carson
Silent Spring

From the spiritual side:

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy
is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone
with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does
one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see
people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as
this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there
will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the
circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that
nature brings solace in all troubles.

Anne Frank

Humans are the most insane species. We worship an invisible God and
slaughter a visible Nature. . . without realizing that this Nature
we slaughter is this invisible God we worship.

Hubert Reeves

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through
which God speaks to us every hour, if we will but listen.

George Washington Carver

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more from the first similitude.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Nature is the living, visible garment of God.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe