101 Inspirational Nature Quotes

When you can’t be in nature, there isn’t much you can do other than think about the good times that lie ahead in the great outdoors.

In that spirit, here are 101 quotes that celebrate the power of nature and will get you pumped for your next travel adventure.

1. Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. – Albert Einstein
2. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. – John Ruskin
3. If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently. – Bill Watterson
4. Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains. – Diane Ackerman
5. The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order. – Henry Miller
6. I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it. – William Shakespeare
7. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. – Leo Tolstoy
8. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
   There is society, where none intrudes,
   By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
   I love not man the less, but Nature more – Lord Byron
9. Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.- Anthony J. D’Angelo
10. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anais Nin
11. Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. – Langston Hughes
12. Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. – Doug Larson
13. On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it. – Jules Renard
14. May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. – Edward Abbey
15. Wildness is the preservation of the World. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
16. Nature does nothing uselessly. – Aristotle
17. My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness. – Michelangelo
18. A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. – Maya Angelou
19. I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. – e. e. cummings
20. Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him. – Tony Hillerman
21. 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. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows… – Ralph Waldo Emerson
22. The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. – Rabindranath Tagore
23. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. – Orison Swett Marden
24. What would the world be, once bereft
    Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
    O let them be left, wildness and wet;
    Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. – Gerard Manley Hopkins
25. One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. – Dale Carnegie
26. In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. – Albert Camus
27. Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. – John Lubbock
28. I had an inheritance from my father,
    It was the moon and the sun.
    And though I roam all over the world,
    The spending of it’s never done. – Ernest Hemingway
29. It’s very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. – Albert Hofmann
30. Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. – Carl Sagan
32. In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. – John Fowles
33. This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy. – Susan Polis Schutz
34. O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
    Let it not be among the jumbled heap
    Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
    Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
    Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
    May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
    ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
    Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
    But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
    Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
    Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
    Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
    Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
    When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. – John Keats
35. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life. – John Burroughs
36. He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair. – Henry David Thoreau
37. To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. – Jane Austin
38. In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. – Aristotle
39. A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart. – Hal Borland
40. Not just beautiful, though–the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me. – Haruki Murakami
41. Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. – John Muir
42. It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. – Neil Armstrong
43. Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. – Hal Borland
44. The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
45. Birds have wings; they’re free; they can fly where they want when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people envy. – Roger Tory Peterson
46. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity. – John Muir
47. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
48. How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature! – Arthur Conan Doyle
49. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. – Henry David Thoreau
50. These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs. – Anton Chekhov
51. I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. – E.B. White
52. Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything. – Robert Browning
53. Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. – Hans Christian Anderson
54. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. – John Muir
55. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. – William Shakespeare
56. Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. – John Updike
57. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. – Lao Tzu
58. We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. – William Hazlitt
59. The mountains are calling and I must go. – John Muir
60. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. – Rachel Carson
61. Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature. – Neil deGrasse Tyson
62. With the coming of spring, I am calm again. – Gustav Mahler
63. Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit. – Anton Chekhov
64. There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. – R. Buckminster Fuller
65. The good man is the friend of all living things. – Mahatma Gandhi
66. To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. – George Santayana
67. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. – John Muir
68. He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature. – Socrates
69. The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. – Galileo Galilei
70. A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. – Albert Einstein
71. Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. – William Wordsworth
72. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. – Walt Whitman
73. Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. – Russell Baker
74. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. – E.O. Wilson
75. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. – Toni Morrison
76. Earth laughs in flowers. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
77. The rite of passage of learning to build a fire that will burn all night with one match is not an insignificant one in my husband’s family, and I grew up camping and backpacking. I love to camp. – Sarah Wayne Callies
78. It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. – Robert Louis Stevenson
79. Giant oak trees… have deep root systems that can extend two-and-one-half times their height. Such trees rarely are blown down regardless of how violent the storms may be. – Joseph B. Wirthlin
80. 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
81. 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
82. Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. – John Lubbock
83. In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. – Margaret Atwood
84. Nature’s first green is gold,
    Her hardest hue to hold.
    Her early leaf’s a flower;
    But only so an hour.
    Then leaf subsides to leaf.
    So Eden sank to grief,
    So dawn goes down to day.
    Nothing gold can stay. – Robert Frost
85. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me – I am happy. – Hamlin Garland
86. How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean. – Arthur C. Clarke
87. He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. – Samuel Johnson
88. A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. – Walt Whitman
89. Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star. – Paul Dirac
90. It’s the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It’s seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can’t watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor’s tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health. – Daniel Quinn
91. The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see. – Edward Abbey
92. I don’t ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful. – Pete Hamill
93. Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau
94. Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? – Rose Kennedy
95. The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. – Jean Giraudoux
96. Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
97. There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties. – John Muir
98. How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! – Emily Dickinson
99. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. – Albert Einstein
100. I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. – John Burroughs
101. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly. – Richard Bach

Do you know of any other good inspirational nature quotes?