Natural World Quotes - Page 11

• To make love is to become like this infant again. We grope with our mouths toward the body of another being, whom we trust, who takes us in her arms. We rock together with this loved one. We move beyond speech. Our bodies move past all the controls we have learned. We cry out in ecstasy, in feeling. We are back in a natural world before culture tried to erase our experience of nature. In this world, to touch another is to express love; there is no idea apart from feeling, and no feeling which does not ring through our bodies and our souls at once.

  Susan Griffin

  Sex, Moving, Past

  Susan Griffin (1981). “Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revolt Against Nature”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• With our technologies--ones of incalcuable power: earth-restoring, planet preserving--we can rediscover an intimacy, a mutuality with the natural world, that is not primitive (though based in part on fear), but knowing. It might even be possible to relearn a life of awe. And inhabit the landscape without violation. With the least violation.

  Janet Kauffman

  Technology, Knowing, World

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• Our identity includes our natural world, how we move through it, how we interact with it and how it sustains us.

  David Suzuki

  Moving, Identity, World

  David Suzuki (2007). “The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, Updated and Expanded”, p.263, Greystone Books Ltd

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• We have too long treated the natural world as an adversary rather than as a life-sustaining gift from the Almighty. If man has the genius to build, which he has, he must also have the ability and the responsibility to preserve.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Responsibility, Men, Long

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• I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

  Ben Fountain

  Taken, Thinking, Car

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• Sooner or later we've got to tie the saving of the natural world to our own public welfare.

  Jim Fowler

  Ties, World, Saving

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• I can't conceive of anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it. And then I'd like to put it together and express it in my paintings. This is the way I want to dedicate my work.

  Robert Bateman

  Together, World, Earth

  "Garden tales reveal what's bugging folks" by Kathleen Sullivan, www.sfgate.com. August 13, 2004.

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• When we are mindful of every nuance of our natural world, we finally get the picture: that we are only given one dazzling moment of life here on Earth, and we must stand before that reality both humbled and elevated, subject to every law of our universe and grateful for our brief but intrinsic participation with it.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Grateful, Reality, Law

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.495, A&C Black

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• One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world, ... Americans still have that chance, more than many peoples.

  Wallace Stegner

  Mean, World, Chance

  Wallace Stegner (2015). “The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West”, p.119, Vintage

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• I think part of the appeal of Antarctica is experiencing some sort of power, the forces of the natural world.

  Jon Krakauer

  Thinking, World, Natural

  "Krakauer in Antarctica". Interview with Liesl Clark, www.pbs.org. February 11, 2003.

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• It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world-Nature-is the only means by which we can requite God's obvious love for it.

  Edward Abbey

  Mean, Environmental, World

  Edward Abbey (1954). “Slumgullion stew: an Edward Abbey reader”, E P Dutton

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• The natural world around us shows the way to relief. All of life is maintained by the sun, by the air, by water, by the earth and its resources. And to whom was the sun given? To everyone. If there is any one thing that people do have in common, it is the gift of sunlight. But as the early Christians said, "If the sun were not hung so high, someone would have claimed it long ago."

  Eberhard Arnold

  Christian, Air, Long Ago

  Eberhard Arnold, Johann Christoph Arnold (2000). “Eberhard Arnold: Writings Selected with an Introduction”, p.94, The Plough Publishing House

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• The natural world is full of females falling hard for stupid male display behavior, including bright feathers, big antlers, and bombastic courtship rituals.

  Richard Conniff

  Sex, Stupid, Fall

  Richard Conniff (2003). “The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide”, p.151, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.

  Richard Louv

  Falling In Love, Art, Children

  Richard Louv (2012). “The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age”, p.9, Algonquin Books

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• By recognizing that the chemical atom is composed of single separable electric quanta, humanity has taken a great step forward in the investigation of the natural world.

  Johannes Stark

  Taken, Humanity, Steps

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• The question is wholly other, deeper and equally relevant to all: whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human "I."

  Vaclav Havel

  Meaningful, Responsibility, Focus

  "Vaclav Havel's Dissident Criticism" by Peter Lawler, bigthink.com.

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• Only when we connect to nature, engaged with nature, are we truly alive and vigorous. To really be alive, one must be under the sun, the moon, the shining stars and surrounded by the beautiful greenery and pure waters of the natural world.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Beautiful, Nature, Stars

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• Exploration of the natural world begins in early childhood, flourishes in middle childhood, and continues in adolescence as a pleasure and a source of strength for social action.

  David Sobel

  Nature, Childhood, World

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• The snow, the wind, the sun and the sounds of nature, can all be reminders to you that you're an integral part of the natural world.

  Wayne Dyer

  Inspirational, Nature, Wind

  Wayne W. Dyer (2009). “The Invisible Force: 365 Ways to Apply the Power of Intention to Your Life: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.120, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• If you've got a religious belief that withers in the face of observations of the natural world, you ought to rethink your beliefs - rethinking the world isn't an option.

  PZ Myers

  Religious, World, Faces

  Profile at Freedom from Religion Foundation, ffrf.org.

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• At a time when it's possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so.

  David Attenborough

  Lonely, Long, People

  "Life in the Freezer". Documentary, www.imdb.com. (1993 - ).

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• Most people are either awakened to or are strengthened in their spiritual journey by experiences in the natural world.

  Richard Louv

  Spiritual, Nature, Journey

  Richard Louv (2013). “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, p.231, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Feet, Broken, Parent

  "Life Thoughts, Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, by One of His Congregation". Book edited by Edna Dean Proctor, 1859.

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• Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world

  Roger Scruton

  Borders, World, Addresses

  Roger Scruton (2014). “The Soul of the World”, p.175, Princeton University Press

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• I think we live in an era of problems that, if you step back and look at them globally, can't be solved. One response to that is, "Oh well, it's all hopeless. The natural world is getting wrecked, birds are disappearing, the planet is warming and so anything we might do on a smaller scale is meaningless."

  Jonathan Franzen

  Thinking, Bird, Looks

  "Exclusive: Jonathan Franzen sounds off on bird poaching, climate change and “performing love”". Interview with LIindsay Abrams, www.salon.com. April 27, 2015.

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