The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entereing a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of books--a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught.
What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye -- it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.
What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Gentleman...look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are godless and foolish, and we don't understand that life is a paradise, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.
Everything in life is speaking in spite of it's apparent silence
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essentail facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.
I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, - except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountian parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life!
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us,the less taste we shall have for destruction.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
A clear breeze has no price, the bright moon no owner.
Who can own a tree?
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.
One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
Nature wants children to be children before men . . . Childhood has its own seeing, thinkin and feeling.
Truth and love are my law and worship; Form and conscience my manifestation and guide; Nature and peace are my shelter and companion; Order is my attitude; Beauty and perfection are my attack.
I want meadows red in tone and trees painted in blue. Nature has no imagination.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.
An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
