Quotes

A sample of ten quotes from people who have expressed the connection between us and nature in an eloquent or thought provoking way.

  • The really important question is: whether the universe is a friendly place or not.

    Albert Einstein
  • The world is too much with us; late and soon,
    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
    Little we see in nature that is ours.
    We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
    This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
    The winds that will be howling at all hours,
    And are up-gathering now like sleeping flowers;
    For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

    William Wordsworth – Sonnet XXXIII
  • '….when you talk about the problems, you tend to disempower people. You tend to make people feel that there is nothing they can do, that they are doomed, that there is no hope. I realized that to break the cycle, planting a tree is very simple, very easy – something positive that anybody can do.

    Wangari Maathai – Kenyan Nobel Laureate
  • The wind, the rain, the mountains and rivers, the woodlands and meadows and all their inhabitants; we need these perhaps even more for our psyche than for our physical survival.

    Thomas Berry
  • I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

    John Muir
  • Believe
     It's happening, the odd crocus
    edges out between rocks and trees,
    blue tongues licking crisp sunshine
    at the feet of near-stripped trees;
    telling us it's becoming warmer and lighter,
    forcing us to believe that there's life after hard-bitten hail,
    snow and frost that sprayed our breath
    in those black mornings.

    Tom Kelly – The Wrong Jarrow, Smokestack Books 2007
  • Who hath not felt the influence that so calms
    The weary mind in summers sultry hours
    When wandering thickest woods beneath the arms
    Of ancient oaks and brushing nameless flowers
    That verge the little ride who hath not made
    A minutes waste of time and sat him down
    Upon a pleasant swell to gaze awhile
    On crowding ferns bluebells hazel leaves
    And showers of lady smocks so called by toil
    When boys sprote gathering sit on stumps and weave
    Garlands while barkmen pill the fallen tree
    -Then mid the green variety to start
    Who hath (not) met that mood from turmoil free
    And felt a placid joy refreshed at heart.

    John Clare
  • 'Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is a symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after winter.'

    Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
  • What is life if full of care,
    We have no time to stand and stare.
    No time to stand beneath the boughs
    And stare as long as sheep or cows.
    No time to see, when woods we pass,
    Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
    No time to see, in broad daylight,
    Streams full of stars, like skies at night….
    A poor life is this if, full of care,
    We have no time to stand and stare.

    WH Davies
  • Life consists of wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence….refreshes him…When I recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable swamp. I enter a sacred place, Sactum Sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature, in short, all good things are wild and free.

    Henry David Thoreau – Walking