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Quotes about nature

276 quotes from 143 people

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Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Immanuel Kant1724–1804Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Translated by Lewis White Beck
- Morality
This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.
Heraclitus535–470 BCFragment 30
Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof.
George Sand1804–1876François le Champi, Introduction (1848); Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif {New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 17
- Art
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Nature (1836), Language
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant1885–1981“What is Civilization?” Ladies’ Home Journal, LXIII (January, 1946)
It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.
Pliny the Elder20–79Naturalis Historia, Book VII, sec. 1.
We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.
Edward Abbey1927–1989“The Heart of Noon”, p. 116
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.
Edmund Burke1729–1797Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
- Change
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature’s means.
Paul Gauguin1848–1903The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 39: ‘Huysmans and Redon’, (written in 1889, published 1953)
- Art
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
E. B. White1899–1985“Coon Tree,” The New Yorker (14 June 1956), The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South (1962); reprinted in Essays of E.B. White (1977)
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
Gore Vidal1925–2012“Gods and Greens” (1989)
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13], 54 min 25 sec
- Responsibility
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Nature (1836), Nature
- Poetry
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Walking (June 1862)
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky
William Wordsworth1770–1850My Heart Leaps Up (The Rainbow), ll. 1-2 (wr. 1802; pub. 1807)In context
- Happiness