100 Inspirational Outdoor Quotes to Ignite Your Love for Nature

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us."

- Frédéric Gros

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

- Albert Einstein

"Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

- John Muir

"But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark."

- Frédéric Gros

"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

- Anne Frank

"The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth."

- Chief Seattle

"People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by the singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul."

- John Muir

"We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

- Chief Seattle

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."

- John Muir

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit."

- Edward Abbey

"Walking causes a repetitive, spontaneous poetry to rise naturally to the lips, words as simple as the sound of footsteps on the road. There also seems to be an echo of walking in the practice of two choruses singing a psalm in alternate verses, each on a single note, a practice that makes it possible to chant and listen by turns. Its main effect is one of repetition and alternation that St Ambrose compared to the sound of the sea: when a gentle surf is breaking quietly on the shore the regularity of the sound doesn’t break the silence, but structures it and renders it audible. Psalmody in the same way, in the to-and-fro of alternating responses, produces (Ambrose said) a happy tranquillity in the soul. The echoing chants, the ebb and flow of waves recall the alternating movement of walking legs: not to shatter but to make the world’s presence palpable and keep time with it. And just as Claudel said that sound renders silence accessible and useful, it ought to be said that walking renders presence accessible and useful."

- Frédéric Gros

"At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough."

- Toni Morrison

"Slowness means cleaving perfectly to time, so closely that the seconds fall one by one, drop by drop like the steady dripping of a tap on stone. This stretching of time deepens space. It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar. Like the regular encounters that deepen friendship."

- Frédéric Gros

"Blinding, mineral, shattering silence. You hear nothing but the quiet crunch of stones underfoot. An implacable, definitive silence, like a transparent death. Sky of a perfectly detached blue. You advance with eyes down, reassuring yourself sometimes with a silent mumbling. Cloudless sky, limestone slabs filled with presence: silence nothing can sidestep. Silence fulfilled, vibrant immobility, tensed like a bow. There’s the silence of early morning. For long routes in autumn you have to start very early. Outside everything is violet, the dim light slanting through red and gold leaves. It is an expectant silence. You walk softly among huge dark trees, still swathed in traces of blue night. You are almost afraid of awakening. Everything whispering quietly. There’s the silence of walks through the snow, muffled footsteps under a white sky. All around you nothing moves. Things and even time itself are iced up, frozen solid in silent immobility. Everything is stopped, unified, thickly padded. A watching silence, white, fluffy, suspended as if in parentheses."

- Frédéric Gros

"The whole concatenation of wild and artificial things, the natural ecosystem as modified by people over the centuries, the build environment layered over layers, the eerie mix of sounds and smells and glimpses neither natural nor crafted- all of it is free for the taking, for the taking in. Take it, take it in, take in more every weekend, every day, and quickly it becomes the theater that intrigues, relaxes, fascinates, seduces, and above all expands any mind focused on it. Outside lies utterly ordinary space open to any casual explorer willing to find the extraordinary. Outside lies unprogrammed awareness that at times becomes directed serendipity. Outside lies magic."

- John Stilgoe

"Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. This is not done easily nor in an hour. It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for one thing, a corrective of glib assessment: one never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it. However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them."

- Nan Shepherd

"I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

- Anne Frank

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

- Lao Tzu

"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Fresh air is as good for the mind as for the body. Nature always seems trying to talk to us as if she had some great secret to tell. And so she has."

- John Lubbock

"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."

- John Muir

"Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness."

- Mary Oliver

"Storms make trees take deeper roots."

- Dolly Parton

"Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow."

- Helen Keller

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things."

- Mary Oliver

"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

- John Muir

"A walk in nature walks the soul back home."

- Mary Davis

"If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere."

- Laura Ingalls Wilder

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

- Henri Matisse

"In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful."

- Alice Walker

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."

- Rachel Carson

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."

- John Lubbock

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

- William Shakespeare

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."

- Rachel Carson

"Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time."

- Katrina Mayer

"You can cut all the flowers, but you can’t keep spring from coming."

- Pablo Neruda

"When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world."

- John Muir

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

- John Muir

"If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand."

- Buddha

"We can never have enough of nature."

- Henry David Thoreau

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end…"

- Edward Abbey

"Nature is not a place to visit, it is home."

- Gary Snyder

"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature."

- Joseph Campbell

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"Nature is loved by what is best in us."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

- Christopher McCandless

"I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."

- Aldo Leopold

"The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask."

- Nancy Newhall

"The greatest adventure is what lies ahead."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"As human beings, we have an innate need to explore, to see what’s around the corner."

- Jimmy Chin

"Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints."

- Frédéric Gros

"In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and winds long to play with your hair."

- Kahli Gibran

"I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day’s work."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"Wilderness is not a luxury but necessity of the human spirit."

- Edward Abbey

"Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization."

- Charles Lindbergh

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

- Margaret Atwood

"We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts."

- William Hazlitt

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous."

- Aristotle

"Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me."

- Walt Whitman

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods. There is 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."

- Lord Byron

"I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put together."

- John Burroughs

"Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams."

- Ashley Smith

"There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story."

- Linda Hogan

"The antidote to exhaustion isn’t rest. It’s nature."

- Shikoba

"Come forth into the light things, let nature be your teacher."

- William Wordsworth

"It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach of us more than we can ever learn from books."

- John Lubbock

"Live the life you’ve dreamed."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is – whether its victim is human or animal – we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity."

- Rachel Carson

"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?"

- E. M. Forster

"Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat."

- Laura Ingalls Wilder

"For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

- Wendell Berry

"Nature is the source of all true knowledge."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."

- Zeno of Citium

"The poetry of the earth is never dead."

- John Keats

"Nature is pleased with simplicity."

- Sir Isaac Newton

"There is no Wi-Fi in the forest, but I promise you will find a better connection."

- Ralph Smart

"When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps."

- John Lennon

"Where flowers bloom, so does hope."

- Lady Bird Johnson

"Never yet was a springtime when the buds forgot to bloom."

- Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

"If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden."

- Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings."

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want."

- Andy Warhol

"Sunsets are proof that endings can often be beautiful, too."

- Beau Taplin

"The earth has its music for all who will listen."

- Reginald Holmes

"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby."

- Langston Hughes

"Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'"

- Robin Williams

"I lie here in the morning sun, the sun that finds me through the honeysuckle leaves, and I think of the sweetness my heart has, and the sweetness of many hearts."

- Peggy Pond Church

"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."

- Bruce Lee

"The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration."

- Claude Monet

"Woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart."

- Hal Borland

"Camping has become one of my most beloved pastimes. I take a fierce delight in swinging a pak o my back or into a canoe and heading for the hills or lakes. In my opinion, camping can be the greatest expression of free will, personal independence, innate ability, and resourcefulness possible today in our industrialized, urbanized existence. Regardless of how miserable or how splendid the circumstances, the sheer experience of camping seems a total justification for doing it."

- Anne LaBastille

"Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control. Open the door, then close it behind you. Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean. Give it back with gratitude."

- Joy Harjo

"Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy."

- Isaac Newton

"Colors are the smiles of nature."

- Leigh Hunt

"The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain."

- Henry Longfellow

"Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking. You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits."

- Cindy Ross

"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves"

- Mahatma Gandhi

"I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it."

- Rosalia de Castro

"Keep your face always toward sunshine and shadows will fall behind you."

- Walt Whitman

"I never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature."

- Bjork

"I have great faith in a seed."

- Henry David Thoreau

"stay together learn the flowers go light"

- Gary Snyder

"Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?"

- Rachel Carson

"To keep every cog and every wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."

- Aldo Leopold

"Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own."

- Charles Dickens

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my propositions. And some see no nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

- William Blake

"The world begins where the road ends."

- Eddie Vedder

"The Earth has music for those who listen."

- William Shakespeare

"it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time."

- Colin Fletcher

"Nature is the art of God."

- Dante Alighieri

"The desert wears… a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent, it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act, it seems to be waiting — but waiting for what?"

- Edward Abbey

"It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine."

- A. A. Milne

"My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature."

- Claude Monet

"The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have."

- Anna Quindlen

"Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder."

- E.B. White

"Choose only one master—nature."

- Rembrandt

"Be healthy by being outdoors in the natural daylight with nature!"

- Steven Magee

"Brute animals are the most healthy, and they are exposed to all weather, and of men, those are healthiest who are the most exposed."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake."

- Wallace Stevens

"He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature."

- Socrates

"You don’t have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it."

- Annie Dillard

"Choose only one master – Nature"

- Rembrandt

"Replay the tape [of evolution] a million times…and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again."

- Stephen Jay Gould

"There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”"

- J.B.S. Haldane

"Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries."

- Jimmy Carter

"It isn’t much good having anything exciting, if you can’t share it with somebody."

- Winnie the Pooh

"I'd rather die with my boots on"

- Teddy Roosevelt (attributed)

"I never knew I liked to be outside so much. I never knew I liked lochs and views and that, but I could seriously handle living in a cottage by the side of somewhere like this."

- Jenn Fagan

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

- Edward Abbey

"I spent the summer traveling; I got halfway across my back yard."

- Louis Agassiz

"The earth has music for those who listen."

- William Shakespeare

"The best way out is always through."

- Robert Frost

"We made love outdoors—without a roof, I like most, without stove, my favorite place, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with dew, and our love for each other was seen. Our love for the world was new."

- Roman Payne

"Any fool can climb rock, it takes a special fool to climb bad rock."

- Don Whillans

"When you reach a fork in the road take it."

- Scottish Proverb

"The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"All good things are wild and free."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air."

- Unknown

"Gray skies are just clouds passing over."

"The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man."

"Wander without reason or purpose"

- Unknown

"A bad day camping is still better than a good day working."

"When the last tree has been cut, the last river poisoned and the last fish been caught, only then we realise that we cannot eat money."

"Anywhere is within walking distance."

- Anonymous