Quotes about Nature

Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea.

You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who. Now

You're feeling it now, fish, he said. And so, God knows, am I.

I pointed to the canvas where the rain was making the finest sound that we, who live much outside of houses, ever hear.

The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs. He ate the white eggs to give himself strength. He ate them all through May to be strong in September and October for the truly big fish.

Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.

YOU DO NOT know how long you are in a river when the current moves swiftly.

Remember the woods were God's first temples.

Black flies, no-see-ums, deer flies, gnats and mosquitoes were instituted by the devil to force people to live in cities where he could get at them better. If it weren't for them everybody would live in the bush and he would be out of work. It was a rather successful invention.

The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water'.

It is an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce.