The Wonder & Magic of Nature

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair.
~ Kahlil Gibran ~
             
Fieldes have eies and woods have eares.
~ John Heywood, 1565 ~

To find the universal elements enough;
to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk
or an evening saunter;
to be thrilled by the stars at night;
to be elated over a bird's nest
or a wildflower in spring
- these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~ John Burroughs, Naturalist (1837-1921) ~

If one way be better than another,
that you may be sure is Nature's way.
~ Aristotle - Nichomachean Ethics ~

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.
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron
from 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' ~

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone,
but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.
~ Martin Luther ~

Nature does not hurry,
yet everything is accomplished.
~ Lao Tzu ~

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth
are never alone or weary of life.
~ Rachel Carson ~

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life,
and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
~ Charles A. Lindbergh,
from ' Life', 22 December 1967 ~

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid ~

Look deep into nature,
and then you will understand everything better.
~ Albert Einstein ~

Nature is the art of God.
~ Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1635 ~

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you,
if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~ Eleonora Duse ~

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 - McClure's, February 1899 ~

The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,
The brooks for the fishers of song;
To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game
The streams and the woods belong.
~ Sam Walter Foss ~

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
~ Francis Bacon ~