What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit – the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

I mean, Hawaii is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful places.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.