african nature quote

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.


The poetry of the earth is never dead. 


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.


In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.


After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.


The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.


Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.


There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.



You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.


The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.


I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.


Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.


Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,
I keep it staying at Home—
With a bobolink for a Chorister,
And an Orchard, for a Dome.


To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.


Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons. Lowell


Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.


As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.


Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street.


To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. ~Helen Keller


Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. ~Henry David Thoreau


Joy all creatures drink
At nature’s bosoms...


What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.


One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.


I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.


I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me.


To one who has been long in city pent,
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.


Fieldes have eies and woods have eares.