Henry Beston Quotes

Nature is a dream state at this point, that we almost don't have a real relationship to it unless it's people living off the land and killing our own food and going for it.

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

It's very easy to lose track of the environment around you, to lose touch with the present.

Yes, I am well aware that nature - or what we call nature: that totality of objects and processes that surrounds us and that alternately creates us and devours us - is neither our accomplice nor our confidant.

There are still some natural forces that everybody understands. Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values.

The world is vast, beautiful, and fascinating, even awe-inspiring - but impersonal. It demands nothing of me, and allows me to demand nothing of it.

Nature is not human hearted.

Nature is nobody's ally.

I study nature, and I realize that no matter how much you learn, you can't top nature.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" : but beavers and their dams are.

Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man?

Nature is where I feel most comfortable; it's where I find my balance. I would like my kids and all future generations to have the chance to experience nature as I did.

It has been my experience that people who are at cross-purposes with nature are cynical about mankind and ill at ease with themselves.

The cloud is free only to go with the wind. The rain is free only in falling.

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

Nature is really important because it's a manifestation of love that hasn't been run through human minds.

Watch nature, because it is your greatest teacher. It moves and flows and moves on again. There is an incredible beauty out there in the mountains, in the forests, to teach you it's silence, it's beauty, it's humility. Stay aligned to that.

Power said to the world, "You are mine." The world kept it prisoner on her throne. Love said to the world, "I am thine." The world gave it the freedom of her house.

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world

Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant.

Somehow the notion has been loosed that nature is hostile to man or that her ways are offensive or slovenly, so that every step of progress is measured by how far we have altered these. Nothing short of a recovery of the ancient virtue of pietas can absolve man from this sin.

Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is paradoxical act of sadistic admiration.