John Ruskin Quotes

I'm a big believer in our connection to nature.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

Watching birds has become part of my daily meditation affirming my connection to the earth body.

I've been taking a lot of time to paint and be in nature. I would say I'm happier as a person. More centered. More free.

We are extremely uncomfortable with the spiritual aspects of gardening, and yet most people feel it in some form or other, even if it's a sense of connection to the greater world on a beautiful day.

My instincts led me to meditate in the woods when I was a kid. I would emerge at sunset and announce to my family that we are all connected beings. I would watch the grass grow and dance with trees and realize that I was a necessary part of the inter-workings of the world.

I was taught that you can't be a healthy individual without art, music, or nature in your life. All my art is tied into inner cultural experience. It has to do with music or ceremonies or nature, even the funny ones.

As a child and young adult, I delighted in being able to identify almost any wild plant or animal.

Lie down among the pines for a while, then get to plain pure white love-work ... to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord.

I like to walk, touch living Mother Earth—bare feet best, and thrill every step. Used to envy happy reptiles that had advantage of so much body in contact with earth, bosom to bosom. [We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way.

...every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.

A heightened sense of the observation of nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint.

Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections--with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds

If I could have made the change sooner I daresay I should never have given a thought to the literary delights of Paris or London; for life in the country is the only state which has always completely satisfied me, and I had never been allowed to gratify it, even for a few weeks at a time. Now I was to know the joys of six or seven months a year among fields and woods of my own, and the childish ecstasy of that first spring outing at Mamaroneck swept away all restlessness in the deep joy of communion with the earth.

Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.

Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature's varied forms.

From the beginning, I've stressed that home is something internal, invisible, portable, especially for those of us with roots in many physical places; we have to root ourselves in our passions, our values and our deepest friends. My home, I've always felt, lies in the songs and novels that I love, in the wife and mother that I'm never far away from, in the monastery to which I've been returning for 25 years.

...he who has seen the intimate beauty of nature cannot tear himself away from it again. He must become either a poet or a naturalist and, if his eyes are keen and his powers of observation sharp enough, he may well become both.

If you have your attention on what is see its fullness in every moment you will discover the dance of the divine in every leaf in every petal in every blade of grass in every rainbow in every rushing stream in every breath of every living being. ...beyond memory and judgement lies the ocean of universal consciousness.

I do many kinds of work, and if you forbid me from binding books, from gardening, from writing poetry, from practicing walking meditation, from teaching children, I will be very unhappy. To me, work is pleasant. Pleasant or unpleaseant depends on our way of looking.

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own two feet, he or she may be a life saver, but the relationship is not one of love.

No, I don't harbor any mystical ideas about writing, Your Honor, it's work like any other kind of craft; the power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is.

I dont separate my work with the band from this solo project-Im sure the group could have recorded any of these, and they would have if the Fleetwood Mac project had come up at this time. I dont have any finished songs lying around.