All quotes

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.

Human effort is not futile, but man fights against the giant forces of Nature in a spirit of humility.

Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.

There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass.

What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!

I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh.

Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever.

Only spread a fern frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity

Standing here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done.

For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.

By space the Universe encompasses and swallows me as an atom, by thought I encompass it.

On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes—changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky.

The greatness and the minuteness of nature pass all understanding.

Nowhere will you see the majestic operations of nature more clearly revealed beside the frailest, most gentle and peaceful things.

The first and last lesson of the useful arts is, that Nature tyrannizes over our works.