51 (More) Quotes on Nature, Wilderness and the Environment

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To celebrate the world around us, here are 51 inspirational quotes of nature, wilderness and the environment.

1. Only when the last tree has been cut down,
Only when the last river has been poisoned,
Only when the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
-Cree Indian Prophecy

2. May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
-Edward Abbey

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

4. Everything you can imagine, nature has already created.
– Albert Einstein

5. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
-Navajo Proverb

6. The human spirit needs places where nature has not been re- arranged by the hand of man.
-Unknown

7. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

8. Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
-Chief Seattle

9. In the hopes of reaching the moon, men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
-Albert Schweitzer

10. Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
-Lao Tzu

12. Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
-William Wordsworth

13. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
-William Shakespeare

14. How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
-James Russell Lowell

15. It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
-Ansel Adams

16. Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard.
-Standing Bear 

17. I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
-Henry David Thoreau

18. The poetry of the earth is never dead.
-John Keats

19. Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.
-Juvenal

20. To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
-Jane Austen

21. Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street.
-William Blake

22. Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
-Rachel Carson

23. Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

24. If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.
-Eido Tai Shimano Roshi

25. 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

26. Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.
-Wendell Berry

27. If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go…. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.
-Terry Tempest Williams

28. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi

29. The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.
-Joseph Wood Krutch

30. We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.
-Barbara Ward

31. Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
-John Ruskin

32. Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
-Margaret Fuller

33. We owe our lives to the sun… How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?
-Lewis Thomas

34. When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.
-Benjamin Franklin

35. It is in man’s heart that the life of nature’s spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

36. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.
-Pearl S. Buck

37. The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask.
-Nancy Newhall

38. I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
-Galileo Galilei

29. At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough.
-Toni Morrison

40. Rain is grace.
-John Updike

41. Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
-Walt Whitman

42. I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
-Aldo Leopold

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

44. The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.
-Joseph Wood Krutch

45. There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself.
-Montaigne

46. When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.
-David Orr

47. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

48. We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved.
-Author Unknown

49. When the soil disappears, the soul disappears.
-Terri Guillemets

50. When the branches of trees in the forest are fighting, the roots are kissing.
-Senegalese proverb

51. To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Check out more of our favorite nature quotes here.

Image: puliarf

Anna Brones

Anna Brones is a food + travel writer with a love for coffee and bikes. She is the author of The Culinary Cyclist and Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break. Catch her weekly column, Foodie Underground.