Quotes about Nature

Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.

Earthly wisdom is doing what comes naturally. Godly wisdom is doing what the Holy Spirit compels us to do.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

I may be a lifelong 'downtowner,' but Central Park really is the most amazing and the most beautiful part of New York City.

Love in this world doesn't come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place.

And yet love obstinately answers that no loved one is standardized. A body, love insists, is neither a spirit nor a machine; it is not a picture, a diagram, a chart, a graph, an anatomy; it is not an explanation; it is not a law. It is precisely and uniquely what it is. It belongs to the world of love, which is a world of living creatures, natural orders and cycles, many small, fragile lights in the dark.

I knew a man who, in the age of chain-saws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts.

But I would have a darkness in my mind like the dark the dead calf makes for a time on the grass where he lies, and will make in the earth as he is carried down. May all dead things lie down in me and be at peace, as in the ground.

Shall we do without hope? Some days there will be none. But now to the dry and dead woods floor they come again, the first flowers of the year, the assembly of the faithful, the beautiful, wholly given to being.