Henry Beston Quotes

I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.

By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.

Part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what God gave us and what will be here a long time after we're gone.

Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we, know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written.

There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape.

Know not to revere human things too much.

That sense of sacredness, that thinking in generations, must begin with reverence for this earth.

One of the things I love about Africa is the amount of dignity and respect and humility you see all the time. You don't realise how often you're disrespected until you are surrounded by respect.

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.

When I pray, I always thank Mother Nature for all the beauty in the world. It's about having an attitude of gratitude.

The Japanese don't have a specific religion, but a spirituality. A cap, shoes, and a table have a spirituality. When you eat an apple, you don't say you eat it: you say, 'I am receiving it.' Kind of like you are thanking the food.

Don't criticize nature, stand in awe of it.

Humility is truth.

I'm constantly humbled.

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after.

Fullness of knowledge always means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance; and that is always conducive to humility and reverence.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father.

Nature best teaches how to pray, and how to reverence all the gifts the Almighty has given us. She is like a vast outspread handkerchief, embroidered with God's eternal name, on which we may dry alike our tears of sorrow and of joy; she turns weeping into ecstasy, and fills our hearts with speechless, quiet reverence and resignation.

Use your lives wisely, my friends, and conserve these precious freedoms for future generations.

We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.

Whoever makes an attempt on a man's life, on a man's liberty, on a man's honour inspires us with a feeling of horror in every way analogous to that which the believer experiences when he sees his idol profaned.

I pray every night, sometimes long prayers about a lot of things and a lot of people, but I don't talk about it or brag about it because that's between God and me, and I'm no better than anybody else in God's sight.

When you know in your bones that your body is a sacred gift, you move in the world with an effortless grace. Gratitude and humility rise up spontaneously.