The air is cool, the breeze is light.
The clouds in the sky are fluffy and white.

The flowers open to show their bright faces,
as the garden snail alongside paces.

The trees unfold their bright green leaves.
The spider a silken web she weaves.

The birds sing their notes high and clear.
Cheer up! Cheer up! Spring is here!

Bible Verses about Nature...

Job 12:7-9 - But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you.  Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?

Matthew 6:26 - Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

Matthew 6:28-29 - See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

Genesis 9:12-13 - And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Nehemiah 9:6 You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.

Psalm 104:24 - O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom has thou made them all: the earth is full of your riches.

Isaiah 42:5 - Thus says God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which comes out of it; he that gives breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

Romans 1:20 - For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Colossians 1:16,17 - For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Isaiah 45:18 - For thus says the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

Jeremiah 32:17 - Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.

Jeremiah 51:16 - When he utters his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens; and he causes the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth: he makes lightnings with rain, and brings forth the wind out of his treasures. 

nature

The British countryside is threatened by people and interests who really do not care for it - Simon Jenkins, Chair, National Trust (January 2013)

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat - Satish Kumar, ecological campaigner (2008)

The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts - Aldo Leopold

To care for the natural world is the most effective insurance policy we can have - Phil Harding (2011)

By failing to recognise the reality of our absolute reliance on ecosystem services, many do not realise that it is in our self-interest to preserve them - Executive Summary 'Valuing our life support systems', Natural Capital Initiative (2009)

Whatever we do to nature, we do to ourselves - Kurt Heidinger

We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible - Wangari Maathai (1940 - 2011), environmental activist, first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004

To halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary to think like an ecosystem - Douglas Wheeler

...we depend on the gifts of nature, but these gifts must be received with gratitude and not exploited or abused - Satish Kumar (ecological campaigner, writing in National Trust Magazine, Spring 2010)

...the future of mankind can be assured only if we rediscover ways in which to live as a part of nature, not apart from her - HRH The Prince of Wales addressing UN climate conference COP15, Copenhagen (December 2009)

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment - Margaret Mead

Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle - Pope John Paul II

Wildlife of the world is disappearing... simply because of a general and widespread ignorance and neglect - HRH Prince Philip

If it's unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature - Mollie Beattie, Director, US Fish and Wildlife Service 1993-1996


Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites - William Ruckelshaus

Modern man talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side - E F Schumacher

Just as our banking sector is struggling with its debts - and paradoxically also facing calls for a return to so-called "old-fashioned," traditional banking - so Nature's life-support systems are failing to cope with the debts we have built up there too. So, if we don't face up to this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust - HRH The Prince of Wales, The Richard Dimbleby Lecture "Facing the Future" (8 July 2009)

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defence of our resources is just as important as defence abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? - Robert Redford

The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth - HRH Prince Philip

At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity - Chico Mendes, Rubber tappers' leader

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap - Kurt Vonnegut Jnr

...our culture's frenzied and mindless assault on the last shreds of nature may not be the wisest course... We're melting the ice caps, ripping up the rainforest, and vacuuming the oceans of everything that wriggles - George Meyer, writer for The Simpsons (BBC Green Room, 3 August 2006)

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal - Edward Wilson

Forests precede civilizations, deserts follow - unattributable



As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love and compassion - Richard Gere

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere - Richard Bach

We define our landscapes as much as they define us - unattributable

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen - Henry David Thoreau, American writer (1817-1862)

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Man is a complex being; he makes the deserts bloom and lakes die - Gil Stern

Activities that destroy ecosystems always destroy jobs - unattributable

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment - Ansel Adams, US photographer and environmentalist (1902 - 1984)

The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour - Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General on the 2003 International Day of Biological Diversity

Our environment is like a patchwork quilt. Each "patch" is dependent on those around it. If one part unravels, it affects the rest - Hemeon

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative - H G Wells



If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse - Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Till now man has been up against nature, from now on he will be up against his own nature - Dennis Gabor

The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives - Indian proverb

We all live downstream - David Suzuki

Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find - Quoted in Time magazine

Modern technology owes ecology an apology - Alan M Eddison

The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences - Frank Herbert

Once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price - Ansel Adams, US photographer and environmentalist (1902 - 1984)

The environment is not as 'cheap as chips', it's priceless and we all have a part to play in protecting it - David Dickinson (TV celebrity)

Only when the last tree is cut, only when the last river is polluted, only when the last fish is caught, will they realise that you can't eat money - Native American proverb

Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we - Michel de Montaigne

But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving - Douglas Adams (author)

Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially - E B White

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value - Theodore Roosevelt (US President 1901-1909)

Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues - Jim Hightower, organic campaigner (USA)

If we do not permit the Earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either - Joseph Woodkrutch

In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught - Baba Dioum

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase it's usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very properity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed - Theodore Roosevelt

If you mess with something long enough, it will break - Schmidt's Law

Beauty dies where litter lies - unattributable

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess!" - Art Buchwald

When you defile the pleasant streams,
And the wild bird's abiding place,
You massacre a million dreams,
And cast your spittle in God's face
- John Drinkwater

Nature is what wins in the end - Abby Adams (1902-1984)




Miscellaneous

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river - Ross Perot

Our relationship with Nature... best way of forging this relationship... be a pilgrim and not a tourist on Planet Earth - Satish Kumar, ecological campaigner (2008)

The surrounding environment is the best erudite master to teach us the fundamental laws of nature and the basics of living life - Anuj Somany

Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street - William Blake

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them - Mark Twain

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe - Carl Sagan

Don't count the seeds in an apple, count the apples in a seed! - Aine Belton

Your descendants shall gather your fruits - Virgil

I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God - Alan Hovhaness

Men argue; nature acts - Voltaire

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished - Lao Tzu

It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little - Oscar Wilde

Uniformity is not nature's way; diversity is nature's way - Vandana Shiva

Those who love and free nature are never alone - Rachel Carson

When you realise how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky - Buddha

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled - Richard Feynman

Anywhere is paradise; it's up to you - unattributable

Nature: a place where birds fly around uncooked - Oscar Wilde

There is however, a true music of nature; the song of the birds, the whisper of leaves, the ripple of waters upon a sandy shore, the wail of wind or sea - Lubbock

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song - Lou Holz

Everybody loves birdsong. It's a human need... the sound of birds gives a deep, if sometimes almost unnoticed, pleasure - Simon Barnes, Wild Notebook, The Times (31.12.2011)

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it - Simon Barnes, Wild Notebook, The Times (31.12.2011)

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The Earth laughs in flowers - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower - Albert Camus

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment - O'Keefe

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change - Buddha

Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul - Prophet Muhammad

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers - Claude Monet

There are always flowers for those who want to see them - Henri Matisse

Take the time to smell a rose - unattributable

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul - Luther Burbank

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won't come true - Ray Evans

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

If you are thinking one year ahead, sow seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate the people - Chinese proverb

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything - William Shakespeare

A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine - Anne Bronte

Do not cut down the tree that gives you shade - Arabian proverb

The tree bestows its shade on all, even the woodcutter - Indian proverb

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars - Walt Whitman

The Amazon is a canary in a coal mine for the Earth - Dan Nepstadt, Ecologist (October 2005)

Every object is beautiful in motion; a ship under sail, trees gently agitated with the wind, and a fine woman dancing, are three instances in point - Abigail Adams (1744-1818) 2nd First Lady of the USA

We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem - William McDonough, architect

No man manages his affairs as well as a tree does - George Bernard Shaw

I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree - (Alfred) Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

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

I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and you. And I think to myself what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue and clouds of white. The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself what a wonderful world - What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong (1901-1970)

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 Marten

We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea - Paul Tillich

How oft a summer shower has started me; to seek the shelter of a hollow tree - "The Hollow Tree" by John Clare

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug - Helen Keller

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free - Charles Dickens

Animals are such agreeable friends; they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms - George Eliot

I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o'er vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodil; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze - William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now - Dambisa Moyo, Zambian economist

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking - Wangari Maathai (1940 - 2011), environmental activist, first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004

He that plants trees loves others besides himself - English proverb

Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees - John Willard Marriott

The world's forests are a shared stolen treasure that we must put back for our children's future - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world - Simon Barnes, Wild Notebook, The Times (31.12.2011)

As each tree falls so does the earth's ability to heal itself and to adapt to the effects of our changing climate - Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs addressing Copenhagen COP15 UN conference (13 December 2009)

The best friend of earth and of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth - Frank Lloyd Wright

Trees are your best antiques - Alexander Smith

Trees give peace to the souls of men - Nora Waln (1895-1964)

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful - Alice Walker

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence - Hal Borland

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver - Martin Luther, reformer and teacher (1483 - 1546)

Nature always tends to act in the simplest way - Bernoulli

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am two with nature - Woody Allen

The value of nature: On many levels, physical, mental and spiritual, our life is dependent on the natural environment. That is to say, our existence and well-being require the maintenance of that which has its being irrespective of ourselves and our efforts - Keith Innes

In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences - R Ingersoll

If we care about the countyside we must eat the view. Most wonderful landscapes are the product of many years of farming. By buying the products of that farming we can all do our part to sustain our beautiful scenery - Richard Wakeford, Chief Executive, Countryside Agency (2002)

People everywhere depend upon biodiversity for their livelihoods, their quality of life, and to provide basic ecological services on which all life depends - The Business and Biodiversity Resource Centre (www.businessandbiodiversity.org)

The spirit of a country, if it is to be true to itself, needs continually to draw great breaths of inspiration from the simple realities of the country; from the smell of its soil, the pattern of its fields, the beauty of its scenery and from the men and women who dwell and toil in the rural areas - Sir George Stapledon in 'Make Fruitful the Land'

A fertile living soil means healthy crops, animals and human beings - unattributable

Man's heart away from nature becomes hard - Standing Bear

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature - Anne Frank

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair - Kahlil Gibran

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

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night - Steve Martin

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while - Kin Hubbard

If people sat outside at night and looked at the stars each night I bet they would live a lot differently - Bill Watterson, cartoonist

Every child is born a naturalist. His eyes are, by nature, open to the glories of the stars, the beauty of the flowers, and the mystery of life - R Search

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man - unattributable

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift - Albert Einstein

This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient, more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used - Henry David Thoreau, American writer (1817-1862)

If we once, and for so long, lived in balance with nature and each other, we should be able to do so again - John Zerzan

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost - Gilbert Keith Chesterton

If you are missing out on the natural joy and wisdom of life, it is because you have been taught to ignore it....Reconnecting with nature consists of bringing into your consciousness a sensory way of thinking and relating with which you are born - Michael J. Cohen

Nature never says one thing and wisdom another - Decimus Junius Juvenalis

In the United Kingdom no one lives more than 75 miles from the sea. For us, as an island nation, the sea has an all-embracing presence. Spiritually and physically we are intimately connected with our shores. The sea has immense power, which we ignore at our peril - National Trust 'Shifting Shores - Living with a changing coastline' (2005)

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in 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 - George Gordon Byron, 1788-1824

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything - William Shakespeare

The earth has music for those who listen - William Shakespeare

Come forth into the light of things. Let nature be your teacher - William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

The poetry of the earth is never dead - John Keats

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order - John Burroughs

When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves - David Orr

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world - John Muir

The beauty of mother nature is her ability to make complex things appear simple - Loius E Samuels, M.D.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts - Rachel Carson