nature - nature 2 - nature 3
    

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

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They who wander widest lift
No more of beauties' jealous veils,
Than they who from their doorways see
The miracle of flowers and trees.

John Greenleaf Whittier

We can learn whatever we need in nature because we are
part of nature. Human beings are part of Creation.  We live by
the same laws as all of nature.

Anne Wilson Schaef

Cliffs that rise a thousand feet without a break,
Lakes that stretch a hundred miles without a wave,
Sands that are white through all the year, without a stain,
Pine-tree woods, winter and summer, ever green,
Streams that forever flow and flow without a pause,
Trees that for twenty thousand years your vows have kept,
You have suddenly healed the pain of a traveler's heart.

Chang Fang-sheng

The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today
is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too.  Though it prevents
my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing.  If it should
continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and
destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass
on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, would be good for me, too.

Henry David Thoreau

 The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass, they speak to me.
The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky,
the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning,
the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me.
The strength of the fire, the taste of the salmon,
the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me.
And my heart soars.

Chief Dan George

People's hearts away from nature become hard.

Standing Bear

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars. . .
and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.
Everything is simply happy.  Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going
to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich
and they will never have any bank balance.  Look at the flowers--for no reason.
It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

Osho

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.  It 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
benumbs 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.

Hamlin Garland

nature - nature 2 - nature 3

Once you have heard the lark, known the swish of feet
through hill-top grass and smelt the earth made ready
for the seed, you are never again going to be fully happy
about the cities and towns that people
carry like a crippling weight upon their backs.

Gwyn Thomas

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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.

John Burroughs

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into
the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.

Washington Irving

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of
infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.

John Ruskin

Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself
to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.

Victor Hugo

Let us permit nature to have her way:
she understands her business better than we do.

Michel de Montaigne

We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren, and
children yet to be born.  We must protect the forests for those who
can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish, and trees.

Chief Qwatsinas

Familiarity with nature never breeds contempt.  The more one learns,
the more one expects surprises, and the more one becomes aware
of the inscrutable.

Archibald Rutledge

Go forth, under the open sky, and listen to Nature's teachings.

William Cullen Bryant

What has come over our age is an alienation from Nature unexampled
in human history.  It has cost us our sense of reality and all but cost
us our humanity.  With the passing of a relation to Nature worthy of
both Nature and the human spirit, with the slow burning down of the
poetic sense together with the noble sense of religious reverence to
which it is allied, humans have almost ceased to be human.  Torn from
earth and unaware, having neither the inheritance and awareness of
human nor the other sureness and integrity of the animal, we have
become vagrants in space, desperate for the meaninglessness which
has closed about us.  True humanity is no inherent and abstract right
but an achievement, and only through the fullness of human experience
may we be as one with all who have been and all who are yet to be,
sharers and brethren and partakers of the mystery of living, reaching
to the full of human peace and the full of human joy.

Henry Beston

We cage a bird for our own pleasure.  We do not cage the bird for its pleasure.
That is not the highest love for the bird.  The highest love for all things is for
us a literal source of life.  The more things in the world of Nature to which we
can give the higher love, the more of their natural love and life shall we get in
return.  So, as we grow, refine and increase this power of recognizing and
loving the bird, the animal, the insect or, in other words, the Infinite in all
things, we shall receive a love, a renewed life, strength, vigour, cheer and
inspiration from not only these, but the falling snow-flake, the driving rain,
the cloud, the sea, the mountain.  And this will not be a mere sentiment, but
a great means for recuperating and strengthening the body, for this strengthens
the spirit with a strength which comes to stay, and what strengthens the spirit
must strengthen the body.  We cannot make of ourselves this capacity for so
loving and drawing strength from all things.  It is our belonging,
but must be demanded of the Supreme Power.

Prentice Mulford

The only important thing is to follow nature.  A tiger should be a good tiger;
a tree, a good tree.  So people should be people.  But to know what people
are, one must follow nature and go alone, admitting the importance of the
unexpected.  Still, nothing is possible without love. . . . For love puts one in
a mood to risk everything, and not to withhold important elements.

Carl Jung

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

William Wordsworth

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes
our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep blue sky, and the
clustering stars above, seem to impart a quiet to the mind.

unattributed

What particular experiences will nourish your soul?  No one can
prescribe that for you; it is something only you can know and
experience.  What is satisfying for one person may be just the
opposite for someone else.  Being out in nature, by the seashore,
or on a mountaintop works for me.  Communing with nature brings
me into soul time.  But for others, being out in nature is something
to be tolerated, or even an ordeal, or just what you do if you're
a member of a family that goes camping.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.

Marie Curie

We might do well to stay home a few days and walk over the fields,
or to stand in the shelter of the barn door and reflect upon the
relentless and yet benevolent forces of Mother Nature. The laws of
nature are relentless. They can never be disobeyed without
exacting a penalty. Yet they are benevolent, for when they are
understood and obeyed, nature yields up the abundance
that blesses those who understand and obey.

Wheeler McMillen

If you can't escape to the country, you can still sit at your window and
watch the sky.  You can watch the rain and the snow.  You can visit a
nearby park and watch the foliage change with each season.  You can turn
your face toward the warmth of the sun or feel a gentle breeze whisper
against your skin.  You can wonder at the changing patterns of light in a
summer sky, and feel the brisk tingle of snowflakes in a winter storm.
Revel in the knowledge that your senses are finely attuned to these
sensations of the natural world.  By staying in tune with nature, you
nourish the eternal spirit within, you come back to the center of life and
to the awareness that God is everywhere present at each moment in time.

Susan L. Taylor
Lessons in Living

Nature is a light, and by looking at Nature in her own light
we will understand her.  Visible Nature can be seen in her
visible light; invisible Nature will become visible if we
acquire the power to perceive her in her inner light.

Paracelsus

I realized long ago how much I could learn by observing nature and how
she deals with adversity.  Nature doesn’t charge for therapy, either. She
sustains us and speaks to us.  Her cycles and rhythms appear through light,
movement, and sounds: lapping waves, tumbling stones, pulsing sap of
plants and trees—all mimicking the rhythms inside our bodies. Even the
quaking earth, in periodic thrusts of volcanic labor,
speaks to the heart of us and our nature.

Bernie Siegel
No Endings, Only Beginnings