John Schisel > John's Quotes

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

“We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.”
― George Carlin

“Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.”
― John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
― John Muir

“The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.”
― John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf: The American Naturalist's 1867 Journey Through the Post-War South

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.”
― Andy Warhol

“If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
― Gary Snyder

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”
― Jane Goodall

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”
― Aldo Leopold

“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”
― Aldous Huxley

“The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.”
― John Muir, The Wild Muir: Twenty-Two of John Muir's Greatest Adventures

“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.”
― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
― John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

“Nature does nothing uselessly.”
― Aristotle, Politics

“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

“Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion.”
― Lorraine Anderson

“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties”
― John Muir

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.”
― John Muir

“The wild places are where we began. When they end, so do we.”
― David Brower

“You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them all flat.”
― Renoir