From the tranquil silence of a forest to the relentless power of the ocean — nature speaks to us in a language that transcends words, urging us to connect, respect, and protect the natural world.
Philosophers, poets, environmentalists, Indigenous leaders, and thinkers from all walks of life have long turned to nature for insight and inspiration. And over the course of history, they’ve attempted to use their words to describe the awe and reverence that the natural world inspires.
We’ve curated the best of these quotes about nature to encourage us to look more deeply at the beauty that surrounds us, to find peace in the wilderness, and to consider the impact of our actions on the planet.
Whether you’re in need of a moment of tranquility, a burst of inspiration, a caption to describe your experience in the great outdoors, or a deeper appreciation for the world around you — let these quotes guide you to a greater connection with the earth.
You might also like: Sustainability Quotes | Earth Day Quotes | Tree Quotes | National Park Quotes
The Best Quotes About Nature
Famous Quotes About the Beauty of Nature
“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.”
— Alice Walker
“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
— Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“What in heaven’s name was the real essence of this beauty? Was it the precision of nature with its physical laws, or was it nature’s mercilessness, ceaselessly resisting man’s understanding?”
— Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes
“Dear old world… you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
— L.M. Montgomery
“All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.”
— Marie Curie
“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We think reconnecting with nature is going to be this moment of buying a pair of hiking boots and getting outdoors. Honestly, what it might actually look like is taking a Zoom call outside or just spending five more minutes outdoors. It’s about taking micro-steps that lead to a macro shift in our lives.”
— Pattie Gonia
“So often like this, in lonely places in the forest, he would come upon something — bird, flower, tree — beautiful beyond all words, if there had been a soul with whom to share it. Beauty is meaningless until it is shared.”
— George Orwell, Burmese Days
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
— Rachel Carson
“The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see.”
— Albert Einstein
“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Inspirational Quotes
“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.”
— Lady Bird Johnson
“Nature shows us that the only constant is change… if we allow it.”
— Pattie Gonia
“You can cut all the flowers, but you can’t keep spring from coming.”
— Pablo Neruda
“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.”
— Andy Warhol
“I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”
— Anne Frank
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
— Lao Tzu
“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
— Chief Seattle
“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”
— John Burroughs
“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
“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 tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my propositions. And some see no nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
— William Blake
“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Going Green Quotes
“Being green and clean is not just an aspiration but an action.”
— Christine Pelosi
“These young people are saying we all have a right to know what is in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, and the food we eat. It is our responsibility to leave this planet cleaner and greener. That must be our legacy.”
— John Lewis
“It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.”
— Barbara Kingsolver
“Going green doesn’t start with doing green acts, it starts with a shift in consciousness.”
— Ian Somerhalder
“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.”
— Lois Lowry
“Everything has yet to be invented. I never say ‘green’ — I say ‘greener.’ It’s greener simply because this is a continuum of change, improvement and discovery.”
— Yves Behar
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”
— Pedro Calderón de la Barca
“Climate change is not just a problem for the future. It is impacting us every day, everywhere.”
— Vandana Shiva
“The future is green energy, sustainability, renewable energy.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
Save Nature Quotes
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”
— Jane Goodall
“I truly believe this alchemy of individual courage and collective drive is a renewable energy source like no other, and it’s what is needed to make lasting change.”
— Kate Williams, 1% for the Planet
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
— Margaret Mead
“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
— Vandana Shiva
“Together we can preserve the forest, securing this immense treasure for the future of all these our children.”
— Chico Mendes
“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”
— Barbara Ward
“Capitalism has really disconnected us from nature, which is very convenient in order to extract from this world.”
— Wyn Wiley
“We fight for what we love. If we can fall in love with nature more, we’re going to be even more equipped to fight for it and to advocate for it.”
— Pattie Gonia
“Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature’s tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with.”
— Louie Schwartzberg
“The environment and the economy are really both sides of the same coin. If we cannot sustain the environment, we cannot sustain ourselves.”
— Wangari Maathai
“We don’t need more stuff produced — we need to effectively and responsibly use what’s already been produced.”
— Ashlee Piper
“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
— Jimmy Carter
“In wilderness is the preservation of the world.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.”
— Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Tree Quotes
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
— Nelson Henderson
“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
— Dolly Parton
“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
“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.”
— Winston Churchill
“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots.”
— Richard Mabey
“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“... the forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself.”
— Richard Nelson, The Island Within
→ Read more quotes about trees
Ocean Quotes
“The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.”
— Blaise Pascal
“With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.”
— Sylvia Earle
“When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“Protecting the ocean is not just about saving marine life; it’s about safeguarding our own future. Our fate is intimately connected to the health of the ocean, and we must take urgent action to preserve it.”
— Greta Thunberg
“The ocean is a mighty harmonist.”
— William Wordsworth
“The ocean is like a big blue heart that connects all living creatures. We must protect it for the sake of our own survival.”
— Eugenie Clark
“But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden.”
— William Carlos Williams, Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
→ Read more quotes about the ocean
Beach Quotes
“One learns first of all in beach living the art of shredding; how little one can get along with, not how much.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“In every drop of water, there is a story of life. Let’s make sure our beaches tell a story of care and conservation.”
— Jean-Michel Cousteau
“Reducing our use of plastic reduces our personal carbon footprint. Removing debris from beaches reduces the effects of pollution on our oceans.”
— R. Heliot, in an article
“There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.”
— Sarah Kay
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.”
— Karen Blixen
“The beach to me is a sacred zone between the earth and the sea, one of those in-between places where transitions can be experienced — where endings can be mourned and beginnings birthed.”
— Joan Anderson
National Park Quotes
“Within National Parks is room — glorious room — room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve.”
— Enos Mills
“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”
— Ansel Adams
“There is nothing so American as our national parks… The fundamental idea behind the parks… is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
“In a world that is becoming increasingly virtual, the parks remain places of visceral beauty. Places where we can remember that we are but a small part of the life on this planet, and that it is a truly wonderful planet and the only one we’ve got.”
— Nevada Barr
“We all should respect our public lands, so when you’re enjoying national parks be sure whatever you bring with you also goes back out with you. Nothing says you care more than leaving a place better than you found it.”
— Deb Haaland, in an interview with the U.S. Department of the Interior
“National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.”
— John F. Kennedy
→ Read more quotes about national parks
Mountain Quotes
“I learn something every time I go into the mountains.”
— Michael Kennedy
“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.”
— Aldous Huxley
“The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.”
— Conrad Anker
“When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.”
— Wilma Rudolph
“Mountains know secrets we need to learn. That it might take time, it might be hard, but if you just hold on long enough, you will find strength to rise up.”
— Tyler Knott
“The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.”
— Jeanne Moreau
“To me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sitting there being perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waiting for us to stop all our fretting and fooling.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
“We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we must elevate ourselves.”
— Todd Skinner
“There’s no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It’s experiencing the climb itself — in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue — that has to be the goal.”
— Karyn Kusama
“Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder’s frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.”
— Haruki Murakami
“Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”
— Theodore Roethke
“I’ve realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.”
— Andrew Garfield
Sunset Quotes
“No sun outlasts its sunset but will rise again and bring the dawn.”
— Maya Angelou
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“Don’t forget: Beautiful sunsets need cloudy skies…”
— Paul Coelho
“I can count on my fingers the number of sunsets I have left, and I don’t want to miss any of them.”
— Suzanne Collins
“And the sunset itself on such waves of ether
That I just can’t comprehend
Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,
Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.”
— Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going.”
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
“Dusk is just an illusion because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are there cannot be one without the other yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel I remember wondering to be always together yet forever apart?”
— Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
“The redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.”
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
“One day,’ you said, ‘I watched the sunset forty-three times!’ And a little later you added: ‘You know, when one is that sad, one can get to love the sunset.’ ‘Were you that sad, then, on the day of the forty-three sunset?’ But the prince made no answer.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“The Andes, guardians of this untamed land, seem to inhale deeply, exhaling a breath that whispers of secrets hidden within their mighty peaks. And I, a mere witness to this grand theater of nature, stand on the precipice, my soul intoxicated by the sheer majesty of the Andean sunset.”
— Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days
“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”
— Jo Walton
Short Quotes
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
— William Shakespeare
“Men argue. Nature acts.”
— Voltaire
“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
— John Keats
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
— Aristotle
“The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.”
— Claude Monet
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
— Gary Snyder
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.”
— Isaac Newton
“Leave the roads; take the trails.”
— Pythagoras
“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
— Jane Austen
“Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.”
— Lao Tzu
“Nature is the art of God.”
— Dante Alighieri
“Nature is the source of all true knowledge.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
→ Read more short quotes
More Quotes
“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
“I like romantically thinking about nature. It helps you fall in love with all the ecosystems.”
— Leah Thomas
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
— Rachel Carson
“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
“Embrace your local nature – it’s not necessarily going to look like these mountain-top moments. There’s so much more than just the baseline of what you think exists. You probably know the biggest park in your city, but you probably don’t know a park that’s within a mile of your house that would blow your mind.”
— Pattie Gonia
“Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word ‘glory’ a meaning for me.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“The next time you stand on a beach at night, watching the moon’s bright path across the water, and the conscious of the moon-drawn tides, remember that the moon itself may have been born of a great tidal wave of earthly substance, torn off into space. And remember if the moon was formed in this fashion, the event may have had much to do with shaping the ocean basins and the continents as we know them.”
— Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
“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.”
— Sir John Lubbock
“Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
— Walt Whitman
Nature Captions
“Once in a while, go someplace that is unspoiled by man.”
“You are never alone when you are connected with nature.”
“Exploring never gets old.”
“Be a force of nature.”
“Listen and delight in the soulful sounds of nature.”
“No better way to recharge than by going outside.”
“There’s no Wi-Fi in the forest, but I promise you’ll find a better connection.”
“Adventure awaits at the end of your comfort zone.”
“Slow down to the pace of nature.”
