All Quotes By Tag: Nature

“What a lovely thing a rose is!”He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. “There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion,” said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. “It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

“How I go to the woodsOrdinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a singlefriend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can siton the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almostunhearable sound of the roses singing.If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must loveyou very much.”

“The Peace of Wild ThingsWhen despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

“The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in meOlder and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.”

“I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.”

“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”

“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 more”

“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things.”

“It’s a terrible paradox that we march toward a virtual Eden when there is still time to reverse pollution and find it again in nature.”

“Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth generously over the world.”

“Love truth and fear not —Do good and be happy.~Simeon Carter (1824–1911)”

“When I take people out into the land I say: ‘Let’s watch the land talk to us.’ And you’ll see some jaws drop. But that’s what it’s doin’ – it’s talking to us without a voice. Our land does that all the time; our water does that, our wind. Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Sun do it all the time. They show us things, what’s happening. They are talking to us constantly. And what do we do? We ignore them; we ignore what the Mother, the land is telling us.”

“When you pick flowers, it is usually to make one person happy, but if you leave the flowers, then many people can see them, and then they, too, will be happy.”

“Hold intention, but allow the green wisdom to guide you in ways you might not suspect. Feel the presence of supernature, as it is the living life force that animates all things. Commune. Be open to your vision, hearing and feelings. Be open to initiation. Be initiated into the ways of the green.”