One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden...

When we allow the genius of simple nature to flow through us we become every genius who has ever lived.

If we put aside the self-awareness standard — and really, how arbitrary and arrogant is that, to take the attribute of consciousness we happen to possess over all creatures and set it atop the hierarchy, proclaiming...

But their bodies will help other plants grow.

We speak often, and sentimentally, of being ‘enchanted’ by the natural world. But what if it’s the other way around? What if we are enchanted, literally, by the human world we live in? That seems...

The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course,...

Does mankind truly hate itself? How can one surmount such irreverence?

We are social animals. We like to feel a part of something of beauty and power that transcends our insignificance. It can be a religion, a political party, a ball club. Why not also Nature?...

Nature does nothing uselessly.

monkey mind,” which is more often than not swinging wildly from branch to branch on intellectual and emotional trees. On the way back down the hiking trail after my encounter with the hawk in Big...

I don’t want to scare anyone but the truth is this virus is undergoing changes slowly. This warning that nature is giving us has to be heeded.

THE LILIESThis morning it was, on the pavement, When that smell hit me again And set the houses reeling. People passed like rain: (The way rain moves and advances over the hills) And it was...

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.

Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance....

First, the explosion of life. Then came the celebration. Such as it had been for generations and generations, as long as the eldest of the eldest could remember; as long as the record books had...

God who gave Animals self motion beyond our understanding is without doubt able to implant other principles of motion in bodies [which] we may understand as little. Some would readily grant this may be a...

There’s the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever.

I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the...

Our Higher Self: The part of us that is connected to nature and also humanity” from Cinderella in Focus: Cindy’s Secret

Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair.

Here, you can’t avoid the changes. And you not only see them, you feel them. You are fully immersed, for better and for worse. You can’t escape the truth when you’re part of it, day...

Spring comes to the Australian Alps like an invisible spirit. There is not the tremendous surge of upthrust life that there is in the lowland valleys, and no wild flowers bloom in the snow mountains...

For more irresponsible that human beings can be, nature always finds (not always healthy) a way to teach us how to be treated.

I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth...

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast...

When I want to feel productive, I box up my stuff—and then unpack everything. With my work ethic, and my unethical nature, I think I’d make a perfect politician.

She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean.

As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares – the propensity and vocation to free thinking – this gradually works back upon the character of the...

Winter is nature’s way of sitting on the sofa and not doing a damn thing. When love grows cold, maybe it’s just impersonating January.

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there...

No church or synagogue pew can produce a higher awareness of God than sitting at the base of a tree and observing His creation.

Prosperity cannot be experienced by living detached from Nature. Everything else is only a gradation of materialistic, earthly ambitions. We came from the stars and there lies the path to our substantive evolution.

I don’t even know what my natural color is. Natural? What is natural? What is that? I do not believe in totally natural for women. For me, natural has something to do with vegetables

How was she created? I’m not sure if you realize this, but it was in God’s image. How can anybody dare to speak ill of something which bears such a noble imprint?

The history of science is the saga of nature defying common sense.

There never was a moment in my life, when I felt so in the Presence, as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach...

Lesson learned from nature cannot be taught by teacher.

Can we love what will swallow us when we are gone? I do.

it may only be able to measure it.

Trees were made of vibrant green leaves sitting on the shoulders of shy green leaves too embarrassed to show themselves.

To one who loves birds, morning always wakes up singing.

Ahead and to the west was our ranger station – and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.

I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.

You don’t believe in Nature anymore. It’s too isolated from you. You’ve abstracted it. It’s so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life’s highway past all the crushed animals and...

I live alone,” he said simply. “I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color...

Romantic waves beat deep in my chest of playful untouchable thoughts of you… As dreams are the threads I weave with care the path for you to me…the sky above lagoon with lovely lights, soft...

But you’re out of another world old kid … You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.

If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.

The green thumb is equable in the face of nature’s uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid...

How inferior the human machine is, compared to man-made machines. They can be decoked, unscrewed, oiled and parts replaced. Decidedly, nature is not a very wonderful thing.