Embrace the Wilderness: A Curated Collection of Inspirational Nature Quotes

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

- Chief Seattle

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

- John Muir

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

- Albert Einstein

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

- John Muir

"Nature is not a place to visit. It is home."

- Gary Snyder

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

- John Muir

"Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods."

- John Muir

"As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When you are in accord with nature, nature will yield its bounty."

- Joseph Campbell

"We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea."

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Chief Seattle

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

- Gary Snyder

"Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in being."

- Eckhart Tolle

"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

"Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

- Albert Einstein

"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."

- John Burroughs

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."

- John Muir

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

- Kahlil Gibran

"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

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

- William Shakespeare

"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God… I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

- Anne Frank

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

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Lao Tzu

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

"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

"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

"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

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

- Andy Warhol

"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

"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

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

- Pablo Neruda

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

- Buddha

"We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us."

- Albert Einstein

"Men argue. Nature acts."

- Voltaire

"If we save our wild places, we will ultimately save ourselves."

- Steve Irwin

"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

"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

"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 earth laughs in flowers."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises."

- Pedro Calderón de la Barca

"I wish the world was twice as big ― and half of it was still unexplored."

- Sir David Frederick Attenborough

"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

"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

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

- Claude Monet

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

- Wendell Berry

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

- Henry David Thoreau

"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

"Nature is the art of God."

- Dante Alighieri

"Nature is the source of all true knowledge."

- Leonardo da Vinci

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

- Mary Davis

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

- Zeno of Citium

"Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time."

- Katrina Mayer

"The poetry of the earth is never dead."

- John Keats

"Nature is pleased with simplicity."

- Sir Isaac Newton

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

- E.B. White

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

- Margaret Atwood

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

- Anne Frank

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

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Where flowers bloom, so does hope."

- Lady Bird Johnson

"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

"Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?"

- Rose Kennedy

"My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness."

- Michelangelo

"Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves."

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

- Albert Camus

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, / There is a 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

"...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?"

- Vincent Willem van Gogh

"How it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; the open air, the rye-fields, the apple orchards."

- Walt Whitman

"Try to forget what objects you have before you – a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, ‘Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,’ and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you."

- Claude Monet

"If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it."

- Jacques Yves Cousteau

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."

- Rachel Louise Carson

"Nature gets into our souls and opens doors to hidden parts of ourselves."

- Pamela Heyda

"I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements."

- Paul Gauguin

"The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized."

- Rachel Carson

"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 tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

- William Blake

"To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."

- Jane Austen

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

- William Wordsworth

"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

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

- Aristotle

"Earth laughs in flowers."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"… and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?"

- Vincent van Gogh

"It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one’s sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Nature is also great fun. To pretend that nature isn’t fun is to miss much of the joy of being alive."

- Diane Ackerman

"But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself."

- Rachel Carson

"It used to be said, that in places like this, nature eventually failed to support man, the truth is exactly the reverse, here man failed to support nature."

- David Attenborough

"What about naming trees?...If we have a tree in our name, we want that tree to live."

- Jane Goodall

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

- Henry David Thoreau

"We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

- William Blake

"Human subtlety... will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."

- Walt Whitman

"How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!"

- Henry David Thoreau

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

- George Eliot

"‘Is the spring coming?’ he said. ‘What is it like?’...’It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…’"

- Frances Hodgson Burnett

"As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see."

- Vincent van Gogh

"Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Shed no tear! O shed no tear! /The flower will bloom another year."

- John Keats

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

- Robin Williams

"I became intensely aware of the being-ness of trees."

- Jane Goodall

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

- Henry David Thoreau

"This our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."

- William Shakespeare

"Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven."

- Bertrand Russell

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Spring is beautiful, and summer is perfect for vacations, but autumn brings a longing to get away from the unreal things of life, out into the forest at night with a campfire and the rustling leaves."

- Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

"Not just beautiful, though ― the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me."

- Haruki Murakami

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."

- Marcel Proust

"The dewy night unrolls a heaven thickly jeweled with sparkling stars."

- Virgil

"As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature."

- John James Audubon

"What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?"

- Pablo Neruda

"Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine."

- Anthony J. D'Angelo

"One must have a mind of winter, to regard the frost and the boughs, of the pine-trees crusted with snow."

- Wallace Stevens

"An organic being is a microcosm — a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and numerous as the stars of heaven."

- Charles Darwin

"Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees."

- Faith Baldwin

"Swim through the serene summer sky."

- Virgil

"A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods."

- Robert Henri

"The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure."

- D. H. Lawrence

"The tree of life is growing where the spirit never dies, and the bright light of salvation shines in dark and empty skies."

- Bob Dylan

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

- Wallace Stevens

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

- Robin Williams

"During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks."

- John James Audubon

"Art takes nature as its model."

- Aristotle

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

- Emily Dickinson

"A miracle constantly repeated becomes a process of nature."

- Lyman Abbott

"Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature."

- Henri Rousseau

"The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers."

- Matsuo Basho

"A tree is known by its fruit."

- Matthew 12:33

"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

"It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine."

- A. A. Milne

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena."

- Odilon Redon

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

- Albert Camus

"I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”"

- Lewis Carroll

"In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her."

- Paul Cezanne

"The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature."

- Ansel Adams

"Nature is my springboard. From her I get my initial impetus. I have tried to relate the visible drama of mountains, trees, and bleached fields with the fantasy of wind blowing and changing colors and forms."

- Milton Avery

"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

"The most perfect steersman that you can have, and the best helm, lies in the triumphal gateway of copying from nature. And this outdoes all other models; and always rely on this with a stout heart, especially as you begin to gain some judgment in draftsmanship."

- Cennino Cennini

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

- Ralph Smart

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today."

- Dale Carnegie

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

- Laura Ingalls Wilder

"Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard."

- Standing Bear

"On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it."

- Jules Renard

"Nature is what we know/ —Yet have no art to say— / So impotent Our Wisdom is /To her Simplicity."

- Emily Dickinson

"Choose only one master—nature."

- Rembrandt

"We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel his presence most when his works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night sky, where his worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest his infinitude, his omnipotence, his omnipresence."

- Charlotte Brontë

"Art will never be able to exist without nature."

- Pierre Bonnard

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

- T.S. Eliot

"A Mocking Bird regularly resorts to the south angle of a chimney top and salutes us with sweetest notes from the rising of the moon until about midnight."

- John James Audubon

"I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people."

- Grandma Moses

"Nature is a haunted house — but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted."

- Emily Dickinson

"Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines."

- Satchel Paige

"A forest bird never wants a cage."

- Henrik Ibsen

"There is only one kind of painting: landscape. It is the most difficult. It has also, I believe, the most simple kind of composition. Because no one can stop us from imagining the world in the way that pleases us most."

- André Derain

"Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see."

- Henri Rousseau

"Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street… Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks."

- Wassily Kandinsky

"All things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure."

- Hans Jean Arp

"Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still."

- Carl Sagan

"Exploration is what you do when you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s what scientists do every day. If a scientist already knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t be discovering anything, because they already knew what they were doing."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Exploration is curiosity put into action."

- Don Walsh

"Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit."

- Frank Borman

"Success is an act of exploration. That means the first thing you have to find is the unknown. Learning is searching; anything else is just waiting."

- Dale Dauten

"Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever."

- George R.R. Martin

"Until you cross the bridge of your insecurities, you can’t begin to explore your possibilities."

- Tim Fargo

"Gray skies are just clouds passing over."

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

"Truly the schemes and wonders of Nature are illimitable."

"In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours."

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