TRVST’s curated selection of the best nature quotes below reminds us to appreciate nature and nature's beauty and not to take its presence for granted.
Nature surrounds us. The sight of flowers blooming, rain falling, the ocean crashing, and many other natural wonders may seem normal to us.
But all these events are only possible in one place; the natural environment on Earth. If there were other life forms, they would have to travel past countless stars for millions of light-years just to see a butterfly flutter and perch itself on one of Earth’s unique flowers.
Related: You Might also like our compilation of environment quotes for more thoughts championing the preservation and conservation of our natural world.
Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
Fittingly starting out right at the top of our list of nature quotes is this from John Muir. Muir, also known as “John of the Mountains,” is credited with founding America’s national parks. His writings describe his love of nature and ecology, while his work was instrumental in creating and preserving now world-famous national parks, including Yosemite and Sequoia National Park.
Muir co-founded the Sierra Club, a leading conservation group. From Scottish Heritage and living his later life in America, an annual John Muir day is celebrated in Scotland to recognize his contribution to ecology, our relationship with nature, and conversation.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
As humans, everything we do and create is subject to the influence of nature. When rain falls, earthquakes, volcanoes erupt, and tsunamis form, we experience the power of nature. In the same light, nature is also subject to our influences. As some of the best nature quotes point out, human activities are reshaping the ecosphere, and we can trace our footprints in the evolution of the other lifeforms around us.
Some say when in nature, you can feel your soul blossoming. We need a new appreciation for nature. And hopefully, with that appreciation will come renewed energy to preserve the world around us. Nature quotes inspire us to explore the forest wilderness, get outdoors and enjoy the natural beauty around us.
The quotes below also make for excellent nature captions on your Instagram or social media posts. Use them to inspire your friends and family to break clear of everyday drudgery with a walk in nature. Or to prompt us all to stop and think twice about our collective impact while enjoying the world’s beauty. Share our nature quotes for a little extra feel-good.
This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist and philosopher. In his book, Walden, for which he is best known, he wrote about the virtues of spending time immersed in nature.
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
People Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
~ Hans Christian Andersen
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.
~ Sylvia Plath
All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.
~ Marie Curie
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in 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
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
~ Khalil Gibran
Some argue we have only one master: nature. Get outside and discover nature’s heart for its good for the human spirit.
I'm happiest walking through fields, on beaches, and over riverbanks. Nature is my surrogate mother.
British-born chef Marco Pierre is a restaurateur and TV personality. The media dubbed White as the first celebrity chef and the “UK restaurant scene's terrible child.” White was the youngest chef (at age 32) and the first-ever British chef to receive three Michelin stars in 1994.
Known as a somewhat controversial figure in some quarters, White claims he finds succor in nature. White’s nature quotes share the walks, the views, and the serenity that nature provides. He knows nature formed him, and he feels most comfortable in her arms.
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
~ Henry David Thoreau
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
~ John Muir
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
~ Anne Frank
An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
~ Henry David Thoreau
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire and some peace and quiet.
~ Brooke Hampton
Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature's tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with.
Louie Schwartzberg, known as Louis Schwartzberg, is an American director, producer, and filmmaker. Schwartzberg is a pioneer of high-end time-lapse cinematography and is the only cinematographer in the world to shoot time-lapse films 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over four decades. Schwartzberg is a visual artist focused on mysteries and human connections with the subtleties of nature.
Nature quotes can inspire us to protect what we fall in love with. Schwartzberg believes nature seduces us as a way of fighting for her survival. Nature wants humans to fall in love with her so that they can all protect her. In essence, if we’re going to keep the beauty we see around us, we need to love nature and protect her.
Nature is a brilliant engineer and builder. It knows how to create seashells that are twice as strong as the most resistant ceramics human beings can manufacture, and it produces silk fibers five times stronger than steel. Nature also knows how to create multipurpose forms.
Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she heads the Mediated Matter study project. Known for incorporating design, biology, and computing into her art and architecture, she was on ICON’s list of Twenty Influential Architects to Shape Our Future.
Oxman’s background as an architect affects the way she sees nature. Nature creates better than we humans can. It creates things in multipurpose forms, so there is almost always more than one use for everything we find in nature. Oxman’s quote encourages us to embrace nature, solving a sizable number of our materials problems in the process.
Nature is indifferent to our love, but never unfaithful.
~ Edward Abbey
If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
~ Vincent Van Gogh
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
~ Helen Keller
If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
~ Laura Ingalls Wilder
Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.
~ Gretel Ehrlich
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
That the sea is one of the most beautiful and magnificent sights in Nature, all admit.
Irish physicist, John Joly, was a geology professor at Dublin University, known for using radiotherapy to treat cancer. The industry also knows him for uranium-thorium dating, a procedure used to estimate the age of geological objects and events. Joly published over 270 scientific books and journals in his lifetime and was the first to explain ice’s slipperiness.
We can all agree that the sea is one of nature's most beautiful sights. Looking at the tall mountains, rivers, and oceans, you can't help but be impressed by their beauty. Joly’s nature quote encourages us to stop appreciating the sea and everything underneath, for nature is inarguably beautiful.
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
Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.
~ Jimmy Carter
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
~ John Ruskin
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.
Alice Walker is an American writer, poet, and social activist. She is famous for her book, The Colour Purple (amazon), which received the National Book Award for hardcover literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1982. Walker was particularly vocal in her civil rights and social activism, coining the term “Womanist” in 1983 to describe a Black Feminist.
Walker’s nature quote brings to mind the perfect imperfection of nature. Everything is perfectly made, whether it looks normal or not. A tree can be different from others of its kind and still be beautiful. Same as humans. We all are uniquely different and yet, still beautiful.
Colors are the smiles of nature.
The earth laughs in flowers.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see.
~ Albert Einstein
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
~ Blaise Pascal
Where flowers bloom, so does hope.
~ Lady Bird Johnson
If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.
~ Buddha
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
~ Joseph Campbell
Every natural action is graceful.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
~ Galileo Galilei
When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of spring.
Madeleine May Kunin is an American diplomat, author, politician, and Vermont’s first female governor. Governor Kunin’s nature quote reminds us that even when we don’t treat the earth right, it still retains the essential rhythm of its seasons.
Spring, summer, fall, and winter all come after each other. Nature provides the balance, in contrast to the chaotic nature of human actions, which cause climate change.
Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.
Harrison Ford is an American actor, aviator, and ecologist. He is famous for his roles in the original Star Wars trilogy, where he starred as Han Solo and Indiana Jones as the title character. Ford is vice-chair of Conservation International, an organization whose sole aim is to protect nature.
As Ford’s nature quote eloquently puts it, in reality, we need nature more than nature needs us. We could die, and nature would almost certainly be fine. But humans cannot survive without nature. Our culture, everything that makes us human, cannot survive without nature.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature-the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
~ Rachel Carson
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
~ Robert Frost
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mother Nature is always speaking. She speaks in a language understood within the peaceful mind of the sincere observer. Leopards, cobras, monkeys, rivers and trees; they all served as my teachers when I lived as a wanderer in the Himalayan foothills.
Radhanath Swami has been a bhakti-traditional monk for nearly 50 years, dedicating his life to helping people find meaning while leading social initiatives from his Mumbai base. Swami is the author of the books The Journey Home and The Journey Within (both on Amazon) and is the inspiration behind numerous social-aid initiatives across India, like the ISKCON’s free meals for over 1 million school kids.
Nature has a language. Only a peaceful mind and sincere observers can understand her language. In this nature quote, Swami opines that nature speaks through her outlets. The animals in their natural settings. The plants in their routine. They are abiotic in their majesticness. We can learn about the ‘mind of nature’ and find beauty by observing our environment.
Nothing is art if it does not come from nature.
Antoni Gaudi is a Catalan architect, Nicknamed “God’s Architect,” and known for his highly individualized style of art. His most recognized work is the church of the Sagrada Familia, which we can find in Barcelona, like most of his other works. It is the most-visited monument in Spain.
Gaudi's nature quote shows how it inspired him for a large part of his career. Gaudi views nature as the greatest artist and thinks that we should consider nothing as art if the creator didn’t derive it from nature.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
I think nature's imagination is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax
~ Richard Phillips Feynman
If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.
~ John Muir
I believe the best way to begin reconnecting humanity's heart, mind, and soul to nature is for us to share our individual stories.
~ J. Drew Lanham
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
~ John Muir
Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.
~ Gerard De Nerval
Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.
~ Steve Maraboli
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
~ Langston Hughes
Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
This section of nature quotes inspires us to look at our actions’ impact on our natural surroundings. We’re but here for a short time on this earth. We can choose to save wildlife and protect the biodiversity we have for future generations. As the nature quotes below suggest, we’d argue that our mutual interest is to do nothing other.
Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
~ Carl Sagan
Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks.
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Duhigg is a Yale University and Harvard Business School graduate. He is the New York Times best-selling author of Smarter Faster Better, a book about efficiency science, and The Power of Habit (both on Amazon). He talks about habit-forming psychology in our lives, companies, and communities. The Power of Habit has spent over two years on the New York Times best-seller list.
Our reckless living is putting us all in danger. Water bodies are suffering the effect of sewage overflow caused by humans. This poses an immediate health risk to marine and human lives. Duhigg, in his nature quote, posits that if we don’t start putting our environment into consideration, our health could suffer from our actions.
Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man.
Environmental conservationist Stewart Lee Udall was an American politician who served three terms as an Arizona Congressman. Udall was single-handedly important in preserving tens of millions of hectares of land in his capacity as Interior Secretary from 1961 to 1969 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He also played a crucial part in forming several acts, including the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Udall believes the protection of nature equates to protecting man. The plants purify the air, and the wildlife protects and provides for man. We should see acts done to conserve and preserve nature as acts done to promote man’s welfare.
The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it.
Barry Commoner was a U.S. cell biologist, college professor, and former presidential candidate. Many know Commoner for his environmental activism, research, and subsequent opposition to nuclear weapons testing, which led to the Nuclear Test Ban treaty of 1963.
Commoner is the best-selling author of three environmental books: The Closing Circle, The Poverty of Power, and Making Peace With the Planet (all on Amazon). The theme of Commoner’s nature quote is the same as the overall message in his books: we need to make peace with the planet. There is no competition with nature. There’s no defeating nature either, and neither should there be. We need humans to adjust our ways to fit into nature.
For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realise that, in order to survive, he must protect it.
~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau
I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.
~ Andy Warhol
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.
~ Lao Tzu
Nature is everything to us, and preserving nature as it is, is really about preserving ourselves. While impacting the earth through commercial activities is almost inevitable, mutual co-existence with nature’s splendor should be our goal. We should, therefore, encourage activities that promote the conservation of landmarks and historic sites. We should preserve the natural beauty of the earth.
Whether it is getting out in the fresh air to explore the true beauty of nature or profoundly immersing ourselves in discovering nature and its meanings, the amazing nature quotes above and over the following pages highlight many reasons to love nature. Nature acts on its own, and we hope you can use these nature captions, sayings, and quotes to inspire others.
I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.
~ William Shakespeare
We hope you enjoyed our curated selection of some of the best nature quotes. Have a scroll and click through the following pages for another selection of quotes about the natural world.
It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett (secret garden)
I have never been in a natural place and felt that it was a waste of time. I never have. And it's a relief. If I'm walking around a desert or whatever, every second is worthwhile.
Jen’s a passionate environmentalist and sustainability expert. With a science degree from Babcock University Jen loves applying her research skills to craft editorial that connects with our global changemaker and readership audiences centered around topics including zero waste, sustainability, climate change, and biodiversity.
Elsewhere Jen’s interests include the role that future technology and data have in helping us solve some of the planet’s biggest challenges.
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