| Nature Quotes |
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Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into. Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger. Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises. Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way. In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. I am two with nature. Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains. For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant! In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. The groves were God's first temples. All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours. Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt - it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else. Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart. Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down. Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life. It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book. Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you somebody who has never achieved much. Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing. Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong. Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit. The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven. I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries. Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. I don't mind if my skull ends up on a shelf as long as it's got my name on it. Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was. A mistake is simply another way of doing things. When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars. Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction. One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste. The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations. My recollection of a hundred lovely lakes has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy. I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. Earth laughs in flowers. Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world. There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art. The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind. Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees. In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them. Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. The poetry of the earth is never dead. It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers. Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experience, but that's not where I live. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. There are always flowers for those who want to see them. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.
Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature. People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.
Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow. |
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