I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.--J. R. R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

If all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked, out with little wildflowers.--Saint Therese of Lisieux

If I have learned nothing else in all these months in the woods, I have thoroughly learned to keep hands off the processes of nature.-Laura Lee Davidson (A Winter of Content)

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.--Jimmy Carter

The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.--Euclid (in Mathematical Journey by Stanley Gudder)

Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.--Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.--Jimmy Carter (An Outdoor Journal)

Man masters nature not by force but by understanding.--Jacob Brownowski

The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are so common. If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would be the most startling event in the world.--Anonymous

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains.--John Muir

Nature always takes her time. Great oaks don't become great overnight. They also lose a lot of leaves, branches and bark in the process of becoming great.--Andrew Matthews

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.--Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)

Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.--John Muir

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.--Henry David Thoreau (Journal January 14, 1861)

Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in our lives.--Mary Ann Brussat

Nature yields her most profound secrets to the person who is determined to uncover them.--Napoleon Hill

Nature's music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions.--Mary Webb (The Spring of Joy)

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.--John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America) 

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.--Thomas H. Huxley

There are for starters, grandeur and silence, pure water and clean air. There is also the gift of distance … the chance to stand away from relationships and daily ritual … and the gift of energy. Wilderness infuses us with its own special brand of energy.--Lynn Thomas

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 (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)

They are much to be pitied who have not been… given a taste for nature early in life.--Jane Austin (Mansfield Park)

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

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.--Isaac Bashevis Singer

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes.--George Sand

You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature.--William Rotsler