Naturalist Quotes

• 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.

  John Muir

  Nature, Heart, I Hate You

  95 Copy quote

• Our minds, as well as our bodies, have need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.

  Edwin Way Teale

  Nature, Rain, Simple

  76 Copy quote

• The answers to our questions are everywhere; we just need to change the lens with which we see the world.

  Janine Benyus

  Lenses, Needs, Answers

  64 Copy quote

• The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Art, Science, Branches

  Theodore Roosevelt, H. W. Brands (2001). “African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-naturalist”, p.21, Rowman & Littlefield

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.

  Charlotte Mason

  Animal, Degrees, World

  198 Copy quote

• Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

  John Berger

  Photography, Drawing, Doe

  John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.40, Bloomsbury Publishing

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".

  John Muir

  Nature, Heart, Garden

  John Muir (1999). “To Yosemite and Beyond: Writings from the Years 1863-1875”

  1280 Copy quote

  Show source

• To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.

  John Burroughs

  Inspirational, Life, Philosophical

  50 Copy quote
• 

  The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.21, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  408 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mountains are calling and I must go.

  John Muir

  Nature, Climbing, Hiking

  John Muir, Terry Gifford (1996). “John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings”, p.190, The Mountaineers Books

  167 Copy quote

  Show source

• After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'

  William S. Burroughs

  Funny, Hilarious, Witty

  William S. Burroughs (1993). “The Adding Machine: Selected Essays”, p.125, Arcade Publishing

  196 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since we humans have the better brain, isn't it our responsibility to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves?

  Joy Adamson

  Responsibility, Animal, Brain

  74 Copy quote
• 

  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

  Peace, Nature, Sunshine

  Atlantic Monthly, Apr. 1898

  260 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

  John Muir

  Nature, Adventure, Garden

  John Muir, Edwin Way Teale, Henry Bugbee Kane (2001). “The Wilderness World of John Muir”, p.312, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  78 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.

  Greg Graffin

  Atheist, Believe, Bills

  18 Copy quote

• The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.

  E. O. Wilson

  Athlete, Science, Humanity

  8 Copy quote

• According to the scientific naturalist version of cosmic history, nature is a permanently closed system of material effects that can never be influenced by something from outside - like God, for example.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Example, Cosmic, Materials

  9 Copy quote
• 

  Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Business, Simple

  Walden ch. 2 (1854)

  121 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature's finest balm.

  Edwin Way Teale

  Nature, Mind, Dawn

  Edwin Way Teale (1987). “Circle of the seasons: the journal of a naturalist's year”, Olympic Marketing Corp

  77 Copy quote

  Show source

• The power of imagination makes us infinite.

  John Muir

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  John Muir, Edwin Way Teale, Henry Bugbee Kane (2001). “The Wilderness World of John Muir”, p.321, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  99 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

  John Muir

  Beauty, Nature, Stars

  Travels in Alaska, ch.1,'The Puget Sound and British Columbia' (published1915).

  101 Copy quote

  Show source

• Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Nature, Feelings

  Charles Darwin (2016). “A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World: the Evolution”, p.9, VM eBooks

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happy indeed is the naturalist: to him the seasons come round like old friends; to him the birds sing: as he walks along, the flowers stretch out from the hedges, or look up from the ground, and as each year fades away, he looks back on a fresh store of happy memories.

  John Lubbock

  Memories, Flower, Years

  Sir John Lubbock (1897). “The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live In”, p.5, Library of Alexandria

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Eye, Two Sides

  93 Copy quote

• The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.

  E. O. Wilson

  Mind, Ordinary, Details

  "Biophilia". Book by E. O. Wilson, 1984.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source