Quotes about nature

You kol-isha think you know everything. You think the world was created for your pleasure, but you do not understand the land.You sit there and you breathe and you feel the cold earth beneath you,and you notice nothing. And why? Because you live your lives in cities of stone, building walls to keep at bay the spirit of the land. You see nothing. You hear nothing. You feel nothing.

In our Gaian world, everything is connected to and influences everything else.

Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.

The system of life on this planet is so astoundingly complex that it was a long time before man even realised that it was a system at all and that it wasn’t something that was just there.

But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we’re driving.

A planet could take pretty good care of itself, he thought, if people would only leave it alone.

Death waits for me, I know it, around

one corner or another.

This doesn't amuse me.

Neither does it frighten me. After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.

It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.

I walked slowly, and listened to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness.

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill—several thrills? I'm going to decorate my room with them."

Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?

See what the world looks like from orbit. Well, in that way, at least, there was profit to be had. Nobody could look down at the planet, green and blue, with no borders in evidence and no sign of human habitation, and not get his perspective forever altered.

Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective. Changes that can affect us can happen in our lifetime in our world—not just changes like wars but bigger and more sweeping events. I believe that without recognizing it we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change; that we are at the end of nature. By the end of nature I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say 'nature,' I mean a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it.