Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Henry David Thoreau

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Henry David Thoreau

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.

Henry David Thoreau

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

Henry David Thoreau

There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I have come to see the nonsense of trying to describe fine scenery.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

Mother Teresa

We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Johannes Tauler

In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.

Johannes Kepler

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

John Adams

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

Jacob Bronowski

Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature.

Louise Erdrich

Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size.

Stewart Udall

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.

Steve Irwin

I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.

Jimmy Carter

I have never been happier, more exhilarated, at peace, rested, inspired, and aware of the grandeur of the universe and the greatness of God than when I find myself in a natural setting not much changed from the way He made it.

Jimmy Carter

We are grossly wasting our energy resources and other precious raw materials as though their supply were infinite. We must even face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned and rational way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature.

John Cage

The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo; changes according to advances in the sciences.

John Cage

What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.

Rachel Carson

Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber.

Rachel Carson

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.

Rachel Carson

For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

Rachel Carson

Only as a child's awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development.