From the Andes Mountains to Monument Valley, from Niagara Falls to Kilauea, nature is truly awe-inspiring. Beyond natural marvels, ecosystems on Earth are so vast and varied. Nature’s beauty and wonder are literally everywhere, waiting to delight and uplift us.
It seems we’re not the only ones who find inspiration in nature. Countless storytellers over the years have examined the endless beauty of the great outdoors. We’ve assembled some of our favorite quotes about nature to motivate and inspire you.
Quotes about Mother Nature
As a nurturer and life-giver, Mother Nature is the female embodiment of our planet. We’ve compiled some of our favorite quotes that remind us of her beauty and power.
1. “Everything about her is captivating, like the aftermath of a storm. People aren’t supposed to get pleasure out of the destruction Mother Nature is capable of, but we want to stare anyway.” —Colleen Hoover, Never Never
2. “Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at us with such dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her. It makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to care for us.” —Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
3. “A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a ‘wood wide web’ of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods.” —Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World
4. “But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered.” —Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World
5. “The desert could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names.” —Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
6. “A good river is nature's life work in song." —Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka
7. “‘Is the spring coming?’ he said. ‘What is it like?’ …’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, The Secret Garden
8. “Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” —Lauren DeStefano, Wither
9. “There are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet.” —Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World
Quotes Celebrating Nature’s Beauty
There’s something about being surrounded by nature that puts our lives in perspective. It helps us realize the insignificance of our problems and become filled with immense gratitude for the world around us.
10. “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, The Bell Jar
11. “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.” —Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
12. “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
13. “He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.” —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
14. “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 off like autumn leaves.” —John Muir, Our National Parks
15. “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” —Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
16. “He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.” —Jack London, The Call of the Wild
17. “The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't.” —Christopher Paolini, Eragon
18. “Not just beautiful, though—the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.” —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
19. “The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.” —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Inspirational Quotes
Feeling stuck? Or feeling down? These quotes about nature will give you just the pick-me-up you need.
20. “We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.” —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
21. “I've found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.” —Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
22. “I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward.” —Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
23. “There is no such thing as magic, though there is such a thing as a knowledge of the secrets of Nature.” —H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure
24. “If fire doesn't raze the mountain, the land will not be fertile.” —Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
25. “I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.” —Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
26. “The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no 'meaning,' they are meaning; the mountains are." —Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Quotes About Love and Human Nature
Human nature has been pondered upon by generations of philosophers and creatives. Many believe that the beauty of human nature can be found in its quirks and imperfections. These thoughts on love and humanity also incorporate musings on and references to the natural world.
27. “What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.” —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
28. “Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.” —Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
29. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” —Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
30. “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’” —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
31. “It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.” —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
32. “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.”
—William Shakespeare, The Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare
33. “The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” —Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
34. “If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that—warm things, kind things, sweet things—help and comfort and laughter—and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.” —Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess
35. “Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you." —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
36. “There is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars.” —John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
37. “We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.” —John Marsden, The Dead of Night
38. “My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” —John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
39. “It is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies.” —Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
40. “If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.” —Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys
Quotes by Thoreau
Writer, philosopher, and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau is best known for Walden, reflection on living in solitude and communion with nature.
41. “All good things are wild and free.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walking
42. “A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
43. “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walking
44. “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, Walden
45. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
46. “Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walking
47. “Nature puts no question and answers none which mortals ask.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
48. “We need the tonic of wildness.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
49. “At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
50. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden
51. “The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours… but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walking
52. “If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so a man.” —Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Quotes by Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson is a celebrated philosopher, essayist, and poet whose work defined the mid-19th century transcendentalist movement. We picked some of our favorite pieces of naturalist wisdom from his writings.
53. “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
54. “But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
55. “To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
56. “The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
57. “The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
58. “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.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
59. “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
60. “Throw a stone into the stream and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
