Quotations on Nature
and Writing
Page 4
I bind unto myself today
The virtue of starlit heavens
The glorious sun's life-giving rays
The whiteness of the moon at even'
The flashing of the lightning free
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.
--Old Irish Hymn
in Saint Anne's Church
The misty dawns of late summer are as much a part of the season as are daisies and goldenrod. The mist fills the valleys and settles over the ponds and streams like smoke before sunrise, and with the dawn's first light there is a curling and wreathing with mysterious little air currents playing tag. --Hal Borland (Twelve Moons of the Year).
To see the world in a
grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
He who binds himself to a
joy
Does the winged life destroy:
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
--William Blake
Poetry arrived in search of me.
I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when.
--Pablo Neruda
"The creek recounts its life history,
describing a grass blade it passed here, a pebble it washed there, keeping a
journal of its travels in a contemplative murmuring. I sit writing, with my back
against a boulder that still holds the warmth of the noon sun."
-- Ann Haymond Zwinger in The Nearsighted Naturalist, p. 161
When frog speaks, he knows I am
not a frog; that doesn't bother him,
doesn't bother me.
We talk anyway.
The love of rain is enough for us.
Robert Sund from "The Frog I
Saved from a Snake"
in Poems from Ish River Country
The advantages of studying bird behavior in your own yard, especially
in studying
nesting, are considerable...Behavior watching is cumulative. Once you get the
knack of it, the more you see and reflect, the more apt you are to observe. And
reading, creative reading of the kind that generates ideas and sparks
enthusiasm, can be a great asset if you want to keep right on learning through
old age."
Lawrence Kilham in On Watching Birds
Each man deciphers from the ancient alphabets of nature only those secrets that his own deeps possess the power to endow with meaning. -- Loren Eiseley in The Unexpected Universe
There can be no resting on past success or other victories. Conservation must be fought for without pause, unceasingly, like liberty itself.--Helen Cruikshank in Flight into Sunshine, 1948
The earth turns, and the seasons, and for all his pride and power man cannot temper the winds or change their course. They are the unseen tides that shape our days and our years. --Hal Borland in Twelve Moons of the Year
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
The foundation of my writing and drawing is personal experience, my 'being there,' and what I have learned through having been there through so many epochs of my life...Moments outside of the human world in the shallows of a marsh, with red-winged blackbirds calling and the wind rustling in cattails or reedgrass, or a solitary spell at the edge of a swamp on the edge of winter--these will bring intimations of the spirit that moves with the water, the light, and the life of the marsh.--David M. Carroll in the Swampwalker's Journal: A Wetlands Year, winner of the John Burroughs Award for 2001
I am asked why I live in the green mountains:
I smile but reply not, for my heart is at rest.
The flowing waters carry the image of the peach blossoms far, far
away:
There is an earth, there is a heaven, unknown to men.
--Ritaihaku
...where Bashô is at his greatest is where he seems most
insignificant, the
neck of a firefly, hailstones in the sun, the chirp of an insect,
muddy
melons, leeks, a dead leaf,--these are full of interest, meaning,
value,
that is, poetry, but not as symbols of the Infinite, not as types
of
Eternity, but in themselves. --R.H. Blyth
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature.
Everything is made
of one hidden stuff.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
A poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence,--because he
has no
identity. The setting sun will always set me to rights, and if a
sparrow
come before my window, I take part in its existence and peck
about the
gravel. --John Keats
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies:--
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson
He who is drawn to something desirable does not desire to have
it as a
thought but as a thing. --Thomas Aquinas
At one time, one blade of grass is as effective as a sixteen
foot golden
statue of Buddha. At another time, a sixteen foot golden statue
of Buddha
is as effective as a blade of grass. --the Hekiganroku
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the
stormy sea,
and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for
the eye
of man. --William Blake
Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone. It is good to listen, not to voices but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen. If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity. And then, in some unexplained way, we share it with others. --GladysTaber
There are winter mornings when the cold without only adds to the cold within, and the more it snows and the more it blows, brighter the fires blaze. --Emily Dickinson
Sometimes the best teacher teaches only once to a single child or to a grownup past hope. --Anonymous in Loren Eiseley's The Unexpected Universe
Indeed, if "biology is chemistry with history," as somebody has said, then nature writing is biology with love. Edward Hoagland in Tigers and Ice
It is no use trying to improve on children's names for wildflowers. --Mary Austin in Land of Little Rain
The sun isn't your friend. It didn't laugh at that stupid little joke. But when the business failed, when your beauty failed, when you should have gone home but spent the night, the sun kept shining. --Sy Safransky in The Sun, Dec. 1995
A pale moon. Sadness. But this is tonight's meal, so eat. The Father of Days wants me to taste it all and, when the moon disappears, to eat darkness, eat it all night. --Sy Safransky in The Sun, Dec. 1995
How important to set aside time each day for the unknowable. How important to reach out: it doesn't matter that I don't yet believe. --Sy Safransky in The Sun, Dec. 1995
Spring comes: the flowers learn their colored shapes. --Maria Konopnicka
"A naturalist's work involves a weaving of
insight gleaned from direct experience with the gift of lore handed us in books
and journals by our predecessors."
--Thomas Lowe Fleischner in The Singing Stone: A Natural History of the
Escalante Canyons