The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.
I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me.
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.
Longer Version:
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.
Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature.
In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.
Our downfall as a species is that we are arrogant enough to think that we can control Mother Nature and stupid enough to think it is our job.
Mother Nature presents neither a wrinkled face nor tottering form, but constantly renews the bloom of her youth, while time fills up the volumes of her history.
As a scientist, I believe that nature is a perfect structure, seen from the standpoint of reason and logical analysis.
Sometimes Mother Nature has the answers when you do not even know the questions.
He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living.
To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
Looking at beauty in the world, is the first step of purifying the mind.
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring -- these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
Longer Version:
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
My profession is always to be alert, to find God in nature, to know God's lurking places, to attend to all the oratorios and the operas in nature.
Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.
Although we say mountains belong to the country, actually, they belong to those that love them.
Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.
Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he's destroying is this God he's worshiping.
I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.
There is an element of truth in everything. Nature teaches, although it can sometimes be misleading.
To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee.
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.
On every stem, on every leaf… and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to devour that particular part.
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.
A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.
I think it annoys God if you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice.
I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so heroic.
There's a whole world out there, right outside your window. You'd be a fool to miss it.
Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
Go outside. Don't tell anyone and don't bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see.
If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
It is said that the forest has a certain limit if you look straight ahead, but the sides are boundless.
I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.
I love places that make you realize how tiny you and your problems are.
This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.
The sun shines not on us but in us.
Longer Version:
The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.
Most people are on the world, not in it.
Longer Version:
Most people are on the world, not in it-- having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them-- undiffused seporate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but seporate.
I never saw a discontented tree.
Longer Version:
I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
Nature is not an engineer or a contractor, and I myself am a part of Nature.
I think nature's imagination is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax.
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.
Longer Version:
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature
is ourselves, to be cherished and explored. Shamanism has always known this,
and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the
path required allies. These allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the
mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in that
nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding that we have denied until
it is now nearly too late.
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws.
Longer Version:
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery -- air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy.
