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Some Favorite Quotes on Nature and Living
A word about quotes in Finding Wonder: Great care has been taken to make sure that all quotes included here are correctly-worded, usually by going to original sources.
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~ Mary Oliver, from her poem "Sometimes"
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
~ Henry David Thoreau, from Journal, August 23, 1853
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature --
the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
~ Rachel Carson, from Sense of Wonder
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match
your nature with Nature.
~ Joseph Campbell, from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
Adopt the pace of nature.
Her secret is patience.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, an essay from The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
~ Mary Oliver, from her poem, "The Summer Day"
I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.
~ John Burroughs, from Time and Change, 1912
This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived. ~ Richard Powers, from The Overstory
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson, from Sense of Wonder
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity ~ Albert Einstein, from Life magazine, May 2, 1955
To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -- is a wonder beyond words.
~ Joanna Macy, from Coming Back to Life
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
~ Henry David Thoreau, from Walking
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
~ John Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierra
I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth.
~ Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire
How can we reciprocate the gifts of the Earth? In gratitude, in ceremony, through acts of practical reverence and land stewardship, in fierce defense of the beings and places we love, in art, in science, in song, in gardens, in children, in ballots, in stories of renewal, in creative resistance, in how we spend our money and our precious lives, by refusing to be complicit with the forces of ecological destruction. In healing.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, from her essay "Returning the Gift"
I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms lie within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.
~ E.O. Wilson, from Biophilia
I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.
~ Andy Warhol, from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.
~ Joanna Macy, from A Year With Rilke
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
~ Henry David Thoreau, from Walden
Keep close to Nature's heart.
~ John Muir, from Alaska Days with John Muir
As long as we frame a worldview with language that refers to the wild as a commodity, it will be treated as one. It is likewise damaging to invoke technology-based metaphors to explain nature: the brain a computer, the earth a spaceship, the rooted and fungal soil beneath our feet a kind of internet. Such mechanistic phrasing unwittingly invites us to see the natural world as other-than-alive and reparable by human skill in ways that it simply is not. If we are seeking a relationship within the earthen community that is meaningful, genuine, and impactful, then the words we use to describe that relationship, and the beings in its purview, must be chosen with intention, with specificity, with intelligence, and with love.
~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt, from Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit
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