If you reconnect with nature and the wilderness you will not only find the meaning of life, but you will experience what it means to be truly alive.

Not by human dwellings–not in crowded cities alone, are the sights and sounds of life. The wildest places of the earth are full of them.

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a...

English is so hierarchical. In Cree, we don’t have animate-inanimate comparisons between things. Animals have souls that are equal to ours. Rocks have souls, trees have souls. Trees are ‘who,’ not ‘what.

out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.

[In geology,] As in history, the material in hand remains silent if no questions are asked. The nature of these questions depends on the ‘school’ to which the geologist belongs and on the objectivity of...

I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with.

I have found that if I tend to a person’s illness rather than to theperson, I am going to treat that person as if they are their illness. In doing so, I run the risk...

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.

This tree, though, had not been fed on, so it was apparent that the culprit was a bull (elephant) who was filled with testosterone but no outlet for it, so he pushed over trees. It’s...

The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as...

Man needs to do some growing up. This need is manifested, among other ways, by the emotional unreason he tends to show toward the behavior of wild creatures. The immoderations and inconsistencies in his attitude...

Emotion has its place, but it must not interfere with taking the appropriate action.

I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it ourselves.

Nature is the best Time-keeper.

Da una parte il cielo era tutto schiarito, e vi brillavano certe stellucce umide, sperdute nella sua grandezza, come in una sconfinata parete di metallo, da dove, sulla terra, venisse a cadere qualche misero soffio...

A cat is a soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

Calligraphy of geeseagainst the sky-the moon seals it.

{Letter to his brother, 1861}… I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths… But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an...

Why did you look at the sunset?’Philip answered with his mouth full:Because I was happy.

Once when I was a little child of six or so, I watched a spider spinning its web in a corner of the house. Before the spider had even finished its job, a mosquito flew...

One could speculate that lichens would be among the last inhabitants to succumb on a dying earth at some distant point in the future.

I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am.I only regret not having loved you.Put your hands in mineAnd let’s be quiet, surrounded by life.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.

Dew moves mountains.

A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there’s anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what’s next. This is the place and...

Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century.

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy...

all nature is at war

Whenever we take the focus off ourselves and move it outward, we benefit. Life’s most fortunate ironies are that what’s best for the long run is best now, and selflessness serves our interests far better...

We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we...

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any...

Hope had finally learned to live in the present. Often, when she found herself in a space of tremendous comfort, usually out in nature, or when her children were safe all around her and on...

Flowers are nature’s gift of love for you.

However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the...

The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature.

The cloudless day is richer at its close;A golden glory settles on the lea;Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool reposeTo mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light,The soul to sweeter,...

Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of...

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

You wouldn’t think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we’ll do it one day. That’s how negligent we are.

Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all affliction,’ wrote John Muir. ‘Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal.’ Now I knew this for what it was: a beguiling but dangerous lie....

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but Nature...

Scientists are human—they’re as biased as any other group. But they do have one great advantage in that science is a self-correcting process.

There is a mystical quality to the place where sea meets land, the clashing of two very different worlds. Yet continuity remains between them. The oceans reclaim the earth with their wind and water. The...

She was beautiful in a way that only wild things can be beautiful.

To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle (God) is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker.[Diary entry, 1971]

‎I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of...

Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature’s loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even...

Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature.- Yes; it’s a funny habit.- No, it’s not funny; you are wrong there. There’s nothing funny in...