The sea has neither meaning nor pity.
A forest bird never wants a cage.
A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine.
Swans sing before they die – ‘twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
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.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Mother Nature may be forgiving this year, or next year, but eventually she’s going to come around and whack you. You’ve got to be prepared.
Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.
The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.
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 want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet.
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.
Even if one tree falls down it wouldn’t affect the entire forest.
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
We are embedded in a biological world and related to the organisms around us.
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
If you violate Nature’s laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
