John Muir

"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn."

Henry David Thoreau

"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."

John Muir

"I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."

Claude Monet

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

Andrew Wyeth

"I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets."

Hamlin Garland

"I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind."

Leo Buscaglia

"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes."

e. e. cummings

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

Alice Walker

"I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree."

Joyce Kilmer

"I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"

Robert Redford

"I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite."

Bertrand Russell

"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."

Henry David Thoreau

"If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way."

Aristotle

"In a pond koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world."

Vince Poscente

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

Aristotle

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

John Muir

"In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."

Aldo Leopold

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

Carl Sagan

"In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me."

John Fowles

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

Albert Camus

"In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia."

Charles Lindbergh

"In your standard-issue family - of which few remain, but on which our expectations are still based - there are parents and there are children. The way you know which are which, aside from certain size and age differences and despite any behavior similarities, is that the parents are the bossy ones."

Delia Ephron

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."

Ansel Adams

"It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."

Frederick Douglass