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It is no longer sufficient to describe the world of nature. The point is to defend it. (Edward Abbey)
The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature. (Ansel Adams)
We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art. (Joseph Addison)
The study of Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind. You should never trifle with Nature. (Jean Louis Agassiz)
These Winter nights against my window-pane / Nature with busy pencil draws designs / Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines, / Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines, / Which she will make when summer comes again-- / Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold, / Like curious Chinese etchings. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
I am at two with nature. (Woody Allen)
In nature there are few sharp lines. (A. R. Ammons)
Humans who spend time in the wilderness, alone, without man-made mechanical noise around them, often discover that their brain begins to recover its ability to discern things. (Robert Anderson)
Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. (Guillaume Apollinaire)
All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Art takes nature as its model. (Aristotle)
Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies. (Aristotle)
Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks amend. (Aristotle)
Modem science, then, maintains on the one hand that nature, both organic and inorganic, strives towards a state of order and that man's actions are governed by the same tendency. (Rudolf Arnheim)
All things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure. (Hans Jean Arp)
I like nature but not its substitutes... Mondrian opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion... Art's origins are natural. (Hans Jean Arp)
There is unspeakable beauty and potential to be found in nature. It entices me and is an invitation I just have to accept. (Jil Ashton-Leigh)
Because the landscape has always been an integral part of my life, I have developed a deep sense of belonging to nature rather than feeling apart from it or above it. (Clyde Aspevig)
A Mocking Bird regularly resorts to the south angle of a chimney top and salutes us with sweetest notes from the rising of the moon until about midnight. (John James Audubon)
Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature. (Marcus Aurelius)
Nature is my springboard. From her I get my initial impetus. I have tried to relate the visible drama of mountains, trees, and bleached fields with the fantasy of wind blowing and changing colors and forms. (Milton Avery)
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. (Sir Francis Bacon)
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees. (Faith Baldwin)
Nature is not a free lunch, but we treat it as a free lunch. (Robert Bateman)
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances. (Charles Baudelaire)
In the beginning I drew and painted from nature in order to know her. Then later, only to fall under her spell. And today, to let her mirror my thoughts and feelings. (William Baziotes)
Nature has been mastering itself for some time now, and it is an honor to be able to capture its beauty. (Justin Beckett)
Rain! Whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. (Henry Ward Beecher)
You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it. (Robert Benchley)
Expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life - all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. (Henry Beston)
I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. (Joseph Beuys)
Christ is one with His creatures and so man must treat his fellow creatures as Christ would. The continual slaughter of native species must be halted before all is lost. (Albert Bierstadt)
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. (William Blake)
The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march toward a higher life. (Helena P. Blavatsky)
A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand becoming, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature... (Reginald H. Blyth)
Nature always springs to the surface and manages to show what she is. It is vain to stop or try to drive her back. She breaks through every obstacle, pushes forward, and at last makes for herself a way. (Nicolas Boileau)
Study nature. Exaggerate light; overstate – the less inhibited you are, the better. (Sergei Bongart)
Art will never be able to exist without nature. (Pierre Bonnard)
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. (Hal Borland)
Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night. (Hal Borland)
Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. (Georges Braque)
At the end of the day, Mother Nature has only one question for us: 'What life did you nurture today?' (Robert Brault)
Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding. (Jacob Bronowski)
Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree. (Emily Bronte)
Keep an obedient heart before nature. She is the master above all other masters. Nature is the concrete manifestation of all that remains true and sublime. (Charles Philip Brooks)
The wild places are where we began. When they end, so do we. (David Brower)
Paul Klee was asked if he liked nature. He responded, 'Yes. My own!' (Peter William Brown)
Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. (Thomas Browne)
Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay. (Robert Browning)
I don't just go birdwatching during mating season because I'm some kind of deviant voyeur. No, pornithology makes real contributions to science, too. (Benson Bruno)
Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature - takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz. the mind and the soul of man. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. (George Burns)
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)
We come from the nature and we have to understand what it is, because we are conected to it and we are part of it. And if we destroy nature we destroy ourselves. (Edward Burtynsky)
Nature, even though it is rugged, is not threatening. It's very hospitable and I can only stand in awe. (George Buytendorp)
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)
What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me. (John Cage)
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. (Albert Camus)
The spectacle of our daily skies, the ripple in a pond or a field of grass, are a reminder of how individual sensitivity determines our ability to recognize those casual and ever-changing visions. (Vittorio Canta)
- A Pioneer Potter...
Oriental thinking, and indeed all pre-industrial thinking, knows that nature may seem hard-hearted and her laws inexorable and often cruel, yet she herself is the very raw material you are working with, and of which you yourself are necessarily a part. You therefore always have to treat her as your friend, as someone with whom you must somehow keep on good terms, or else you and your works will be no good. She is after all your mother, not an enemy to be subdued, or a slave to be violated. (Michael Cardew)
The more we advance, the more we realize with Whistler that nature is never right. (John F. Carlson)
Nature admits no lie. (Thomas Carlyle)
As the woods are the same, the trees standing in their places, the rocks and the earth... they are always different too, as lights and shadows and seasons and moods pass through them. (Emily Carr)
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)
Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise. (George Washington Carver)
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. (Willa Cather)
The most perfect steersman that you can have, and the best helm, lies in the triumphal gateway of copying from nature. And this outdoes all other models; and always rely on this with a stout heart, especially as you begin to gain some judgment in draftsmanship. (Cennino Cennini)
I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it. (Miguel de Cervantes)
I have not tried to reproduce nature: I have represented it. (Paul Cezanne)
In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her. (Paul Cezanne)
The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature. (Paul Cezanne)
What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature. (Paul Cezanne)
The habit of ignoring Nature is deeply implanted in our times. This attitude reminds me of people who never look you in the eye; I find them disturbing and always have to look away. (Marc Chagall)
-b.1860 d.1904...
Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. (Anton Chekhov)
Nature's own masterpieces will never go away. If I am able to cast just a few of them in favorable light, and convince you, the viewer, to look at them again with greater appreciation and perhaps a fresh perspective, then I have succeeded as an artist. (Scott L. Christensen)
The greatest cathedral of all is nature itself. It simultaneously humbles and pulls up giant emotions that cannot be fully expressed in mere words. (Rodney Cobb)
A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Bless the trees and wild renewing places! (Pauline Conn)
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert...
I live in nature where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is the planet around the sun... The ancient people understood that our world is a circle... Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. (Eustace Conway)
Nature is but a name for an effect / Whose cause is God. (William Cowper)
Decay reminds us that humankind will inevitably lose everything to the forces of nature... (Reno Dakota)
I hope to bring ancient philosophy and new scientific thinking together, to provide a new perspective of nature, especially the relationship between nature and man. (Liu Dan)
These mountains were given to us by the Great Chief so that we might never be depressed. (David Daniels)
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature! (Charles Darwin)
Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it. (Eugene Delacroix)
Nature engenders the science of painting. (Robert Delaunay)
Sometimes it's the air, sometimes it's the smell. Sometimes it's the sound of water, sometimes it's the stillness. It's tapping into the transcendent, and teaching your heart to see it, and making your eyes and hands express it that creates transcendent paintings. (Gil Dellinger)
It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals. (Esther Warner Dendel)
Nature has a way of arranging her own effects of chiaroscuro but for every viewpoint there will be a short period when everything is at its very best. (Kenneth Denton)
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own. (Charles Dickens)
This is my letter to the world, that never wrote to me, the simple news that Nature told, with tender majesty. Her message is committed, to hands I cannot see; for love of her, sweet countrymen, judge tenderly of me. (Emily Dickinson)
Nature is what we know / Yet have not art to say / So impotent our wisdom is / To her simplicity. (Emily Dickinson)
Nature is the art of God. (Benjamin Disraeli)
Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness. (Benjamin Disraeli)
Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant - the only harmless great thing. (John Donne)
I can claim no background except perhaps the woods, running streams, hunting, fishing, camping, the sky... (Arthur Dove)
By viewing Nature, Nature's handmaid, art, / Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow. (John Dryden)
Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her. (John Dryden)
We'll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small - in short, we'll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven't seen her for some time. (Alexandre Dumas)
Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal. (Will Durant)
We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it. (Lawrence Durrell)
-quoted and illustrated by Tom Thomson...
Spend as much time as possible, with body and with spirit in God's out-of-doors. (Henry van Dyke)
The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible. (Freeman Dyson)
The big artist... keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools. (Thomas Eakins)
The warmth of the sun, the cooling aspect of the breeze, the smell of salt from the ocean... It's heaven on earth to have these comforting embraces of nature that simply plead to be released on canvas. (Vicki Easingwood)
If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence. (Meister Johann Eckhart)
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. (George Eliot)
The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
If you're in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect. (Brian Eno)
To be alone with nature is to be one with nature. (Peter Ewart)
I recently witnessed two doves, one black, one white, building a nest in my window sill. The next day two eggs were laid,
and on the 1st day of June, the new babies were hatched... tiny, little, wet, long-necked creatures feeding, shaking and trying to stay warm under mother's cover (the blue ring around her eye is as pure as the heavens above). And this morning, the little newborns stretched and flapped their wings for the first time; preparation for flight. (Ian Factor)
A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects. (Edna Ferber)
If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks. (Richard Feynman)
All nature wears one universal grin. (Henry Fielding)
The bare, uncompromising face of the land is too much for us to behold, and so we clothe it in myth, sentiment, and imposed expectations. (Robert Finch)
Everything I do is directly from nature, but I re-orchestrate. (Peter Fiore)
In the winter, the world gets sharp. Beautiful things happen. (Peter Fiore)
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? (E. M. Forster)
Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model. (Northrop Frye)
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. (Buckminster Fuller)
Nature seems to have poured forth her riches so without calculation, merely to mark the fullness of her joy. (Margaret Fuller)
The shapes we are creating are not abstract, they are absolute. They are released from any already existant thing in nature and their content lies in themselves. (Naum Gabo)
A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result. (Paul Gauguin)
I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements. (Paul Gauguin)
Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself. (Paul Gauguin)
While knowledge of tools and the love of motif may be in your backpack, and all mountains may be measured by their previous heroes, art must exist for you in a place beyond the judgment of others. (Robert Genn)
The artist needs to sit patiently at the feet of Nature in all Her moods and nuances and silently develop the skills to honour Her. There are no recipes for Autumn. (Robert Genn)
Every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things... a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures. (Ellen Glasgow)
The unnatural, that too is natural. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere. (Vincent van Gogh)
I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, I sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don't invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It's a question of picking out what one wants from nature. (Vincent van Gogh)
What I love about the currawongs is the way in which they appear from nowhere and, for a brief period, rule the garden's soundscape, only to disappear as quickly as they arrived. (John Gould)
But where do they find these lines in nature? I can only see luminous or obscure masses, planes that advance or planes that recede, reliefs or background. My eye never catches lines or details. (Francisco de Goya)
Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art. (Baltasar Gracian)
-b.1716 d.1771...
The meanest flowret of the vale, / The simplest note that swells the gale, / The common sun, the air, and skies, / To him are opening paradise. (Thomas Gray)
A large picture can give us images of things, but a relatively small one can best re-create the instantaneous unity of nature as a view - the unity of which the eyes take in at a single glance. (Clement Greenberg)
Nature suggests the mood, the painter interprets and records it. (Don Grieger)
I have a studio in the country - in the woods - but my paintings look more real to me than what is outdoors. You walk outside; the rocks are inert; even the clouds are inert. It makes me feel a little better. But I do have a faith that it is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something living, something that changes each day. (Philip Guston)
Photography is a bridge between science and art. It brings to science what it needs most, the artistic sense, and to art the proof that nothing can be imagined which cannot be matched in the counterpoints of nature. (Ernst Haas)
We must preserve the natural world; for without nature, there would be no beauty to inspire us. (Hap Hagood)
Feeling the wind on your face, and hearing the song of the birds, and watching the sun move across the land is to know there is no greater job than to be free to paint. (Andrew Hamilton)
We are vibration. And when you're in nature, you're feeling that vibration and you're understanding the sounds and resonances that come out of that. Nature is so vital to who we are as human beings. (Carla Hannaford)
To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. (Thomas Hardy)
So long as painting deals with objective nature, it is an impure art, for recognizability precludes the highest aesthetic emotion. All painting, ancient or modern, moves us aesthetically only in so far as it possesses a force over and beyond its aspect. (Lawren Harris)
Visible nature is but a distorted reflection of a more perfect world and the creative individual viewing her is inspired to perceive within and behind her many garments, that which is timeless and entirely beautiful. (Lawren Harris)
I have achieved the 'sacred' pilgrimage to Ktaadn MT - exceeding all my expectations so far that I am sort of helpless with words. I feel as if I have seen God for the first time, and find him so nonchalantly solemn. (Marsden Hartley)
Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means. (Heinrich Heine)
The world can be breathtakingly beautiful and demand awe and inspiration. But what of the uncharted inner territories where Nature also reigns? (Cecilia Henle)
There has never been a painting that was more beautiful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a human being. (Robert Henri)
Nature is wont to hide herself. (Heraclitus)
The sun stands still for no one, constantly changing shadows, lighting and the general atmosphere... You have little time to meditate and contemplate your subject... you must quickly decide your course of action, and with verve and emotion, capture the essence of your subject. (Sidney Hermel)
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. (Hermann Hesse)
Nature gets into our souls and opens doors to hidden parts of ourselves. (Pamela Heyda)
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price. (Napoleon Hill)
-The Desert Magazine: Beach Combing on the Desert...
The modern beach comber on the desert will find a greater variety of agate, jasper and other precious stones than can be obtained along the shoreline of any existing ocean. Without even the risk of wetting his feet, the visitor may find shells, coral and plant forms imprinted in stone millions of years old. (John W. Hilton)
If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look... and paint what you see until the canvas ends. (David Hockney)
Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind. (Hans Hofmann)
When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. (Sherlock Holmes)
Frost is the greatest artist in our clime - he paints in nature and describes in rime. (Thomas Hood)
Nature is harmony in discord. (Horace)
Everyone goes to the forest; some go for a walk to be inspired, and others go to cut down the trees. (Vladimir Horowitz)
I'm not interested in precisely illustrating animals and flowers but simply in using the natural world – the imagery of my surroundings... freely associating and juxtaposing images. (Carolyn Hoyle)
Nature is economical. She puts her lights and darks only where she needs them. Don't try to be more skillful than she is! (William Morris Hunt)
There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. (Washington Irving)
A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity. (Charles Ives)
- The Summer Book...
Only farmers and summer guests walk on the moss. What they don't know - and it cannot be repeated too often - is that moss is terribly frail. Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn't rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies. (Tove Jansson)
-in 1864...
Landscape is the creation of the one God - his sensuous image and revelation, through the investigation of which, by science or its representation by art, men's hearts are lifted toward him. (James Jackson Jarves)
People mistakenly think that art is about nature, or about an artist's feelings about nature. It is instead a path of enlightenment and pleasure, one of many paths, where nature and the artist's feelings are merely raw material. (Wolf Kahn)
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me. (Jack Kerouac)
In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me; at such times I am annihilated, but at peace. This would be fine for old people but I... I am my life's debtor, for I have given promises... (Paul Klee)
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion; let the artist be truly taciturn. (Paul Klee)
I dash out to the banks of the river... and find myself amongst the rushes and the reeds. I grind some pigment over all this and the wind makes their slender stalks bend and appliques them with precision and delicacy on to my canvas, which I thus offer to quivering nature: I obtain a vegetal mark. Then it starts to rain; a fine spring rain: I expose my canvas to the rain... and I have the mark of the rain! - a mark of an atmospheric event. (Yves Klein)
'Ready-mades' surround us in nature. Beauty, symmetry, and proportion are everywhere, usually pretty close to home. (Jackie Knott)
Looking at scenes of nature, for even a short while, can help us become more insightful, more creative, and more productive. (Maria Konnikova)
-on the Sonoran desert...
An abundance of some good things is perfectly compatible with the scarcity of others; that life is everywhere precarious, man everywhere small. (Joseph Wood Krutch)
-catalogue entry in 1878...
This picture has been painted entirely from nature and out of doors, except where an accident has necessitated repairs. (John La Farge)
Patterns, cycles, rhythms... nature has the ability to humble, simplify and connect at a level that goes beyond the physical and into the spiritual realm. (Judy Lalingo)
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. (Dalai Lama)
Many of the earth's habitats, animals, plants, insects and even micro-organisms that we know to be rare may not be known at all by future generations. We have the capability and the responsibility to act; we must do so before it is too late. (Dalai Lama)
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art. (Walter Savage Landor)
If a work of art is a projection of feeling, its kinship with organic nature will emerge, no matter through how many transformations, logically and inevitably. (Suzanne Langer)
An artist struggles to capture what nature effortlessly creates. (Brian M. LaSaga)
Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs. (Fran Lebowitz)
Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself. (Annie Leibovitz)
One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring. (Aldo Leopold)
We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
Deism is the belief that nature and God are one and the same thing. If you study nature, you're getting insights about God. (Bruce Lipton)
- on Tom Thomson, Canadian painter (1877-1917)...
Thomson sought the wilderness, never seeking to tame it, but only to draw from it, its magic of tangle and season. (Arthur Lismer)
One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself. (Jack London)
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
No tears/ Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise, if some day when I am alone in the woods one of the trees were to speak to me. (John Lubbock)
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)
One felt that the mountains are not completed. The builders are still at work. Stones come rolling and jumping from the upper scaffolding and often from the chasms one hears the thundering as the gods of the mountains change their minds. (J. E. H. MacDonald)
There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another. (Edouard Manet)
Today we are searching for things in nature that are hidden behind the veil of appearance... We look for and paint this inner, spiritual side of nature. (Franz Marc)
Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift. (Brice Marden)
The mountain teaches stability and grandeur, the ocean immensity and change. 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)
Nature has always been my main point of reference. As a child I was fascinated by landscapes... I want to walk into them... and I don't want to meet anybody in a landscape. (Queen Margrethe II)
Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited. (Yann Martel)
-Painting Nature with a Free Spirit...
There is nothing new in nature, but its countless ingredients are eternally being shuffled into different combinations. There is a lesson in this for the artist, too. (Maxine Masterfield)
An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language. (Henri Matisse)
What name for this object, made in a dance? Beyond place, it is the landscape of my soul, conceived in the spirit of music, born on canvas in the medium of paint to give voice and form to a meditation in the realm of Nature. (Louisa McElwain)
-Boy's Life
There is something about nature out of control that touches a primal terror. We are used to believing that we're the masters of our domain, and that God has given us this earth to rule over. We need this illusion like a good night-light. (Robert R. McGammon)
Whenever I go into the field and take a camera and I call a coyote in within 15 or 20 yards and I get a great image, I get that same elation [as hunting]. But yet he lives another day, and I love to hear him howl at night and he'll be one of them. (Wyman Meinzer)
You are one of the forces of nature. (Jules Michelet)
All I could see from where I stood / Was three long mountains and a wood. (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
I knew my purpose well and clear: to show how Nature behaves without cluttering its beauty with abtruse mathematics. (Julius Sumner Miller)
I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. (Navarre Scott Momaday)
-on view from apartment...
Trees! How ghastly! (Piet Mondrian)
Nature or, that which I see, inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation, still just an external foundation, of things... (Piet Mondrian)
When I look at nature I feel as if I'll be able to paint it all, note it all down, and then you might as well forget it once you're working... (Claude Monet)
I would like to paint the way a bird sings. (Claude Monet)
- as a young painter...
My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it. (Claude Monet)
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her... I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. (Claude Monet)
If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain. (Claude Monet)
Nature won't be summoned to order and won't be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught. (Claude Monet)
Nature's inherent wisdom is constantly communicating through form and color in ways that your hand and brush can follow with a little training. Just let your heart paint, and let your head take second place. (Leslie Montana)
-Anne's House of Dreams...
I couldn't live where there were no trees - something vital in me would starve. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)
The whole of nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form. It always surprises me when artists try to escape from this. (Henry Moore)
Nature is simply the opportunity for the artist to express himself. (Gustave Moreau)
A love of nature is a consolation against failure. (Berthe Morisot)
Nature has always something rare to show us... and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof. (John Muir)
So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees... (John Muir)
The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind. (Lewis Mumford)
Nature is not only what is visible to the eye – it also shows the inner images of the soul – the images on the back side of the eyes. (Edvard Munch)
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world. An ecological truth. (Leith Nance)
Snow is all right while it is snowing; it is like inebriation because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going. (Ogden Nash)
Green was the silence, wet was the light, / the month of June trembled like a butterfly. (Pablo Neruda)
If you work outdoors be passive, go with the weather. This may mean two hours sheltering from a downpour, followed by a wonderful burst of sunlight and a rainbow. (John Newberry)
The 'clarity' and the 'realness' of the natural world, free of the noises of the mind, bring an almost transcendent state of consciousness. (Robert R. Newport)
The art of stone in a Japanese garden is that of placement. Its ideal does not deviate from that of nature. (Isamu Noguchi)
-Thinks and Remarks by Bill Nye, Spring, 1886...
Spring comes with joyous laugh, and song, and sunshine, and the burnt sacrifice of the over-ripe boot and the hoary overshoe. The cowboy and the new milch cow carol their roundelay. So does the veteran hen. The common egg of commerce begins to come forth into the market at a price where it
can be secured with a step-ladder, and all nature seems tickled. (Edgar Wilson Nye)
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. (Mary Oliver)
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else. (Mary Oliver)
Let's find visual excitement in what nature has to offer. (Toni Onley)
The modern man propelled by the spirit of the jet and information age is too busy to observe little things in nature - the artist has a duty to draw attention to these details of nature, for very often the answers we often seek are in the details provided by nature, which are often overlooked. (Bruce Onobrakpeya)
Nature is God's, art is man's instrument. (Thomas Overbury)
Unlike a child in a totally urban environment, my friends and peer group were not only other children, but also wild and domesticated animals, plants of every sort, brooks and waterfalls, rocks and sand. (Freeman Patterson)
In Banff, the mountains are really close to your head... (Jan Peacock)
The vibration of this light, the spaciousness of these skies enthralled me. I knew there was a spirit in nature as in everything else, but here in the desert it was an especially bright spirit. (Agnes Pelton)
We are losing the wilderness not primarily through pollution or over population but... because of disinterest and neglect. We simply are unaware of what a treasure this is, and we have little interest or knowledge of the wilderness and its inhabitants. (Murray Phillips)
The beauty and wonders of nature are as alluring as the pursuit of Art, and made of me a landscape painter. (Walter J. Phillips)
Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence. (Walter J. Phillips)
Mountains terrify me - they just sit about; they are so proud. (Sylvia Plath)
I am first and foremost in this life a naturalist, interested in life forms and their processes. (Virginia Pochmann)
I don't paint nature. I am nature. (Jackson Pollock)
There's something always instinctively visually right about nature. There's no difference, to my eye, between looking at a great painting and looking at nature. Because painting, when it's great, has the same immutable rightness, unquestioned rightness, about it. (Larry Poons)
All are but parts of one stupendous whole, / Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. (Alexander Pope)
The difference between a gun and a tree is a difference of tempo. The tree explodes every spring. (Ezra Pound)
Thr principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbit; rivers make their way to the sea. (Steven Pressfield)
The best time to plant a tree was always 20 years ago. The second best time is always today. (Chinese proverb)
Nature is beyond all teaching. (Latin proverb)
Nature is the great nurse for tired minds. Let her have her way with you, and all will be well. (Herbert Pryke)
Nature abhors a vacuum. (Francois Rabelais)
The trouble with nature is that it's full of interesting things that clamour for your attention, rather like a Property Room in a theatre. It's up to you to select the relevant items you need. (Ron Ranson)
The trouble is that nature and art are not the same thing at all. A glance at any photograph, no matter how well taken, will show you that nature is not in the picture-making business. (Ron Ranson)
A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at? (Ronald Reagan)
To set your easel up in front of the majesty of the untouched virgin wilderness is so humbling that it is hard to believe that you've been given the honor of trying to express your reaction to what you are witnessing. (William F. Reese)
You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them all flat. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than with her; or as they express themselves, 'that it only put them out.' (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature... but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters. This appears more humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
I mean the glorifying way we look at nature - nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless: the total antithesis of ourselves, absolutely inhuman. (Gerhard Richter)
I work with nature, although in completely new terms. For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces... an event rather than an appearance. These forces can only be tackled by treating color and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles. (Bridget Riley)
To be in circumstances that are working upon us, that from time to time place us in front of great natural Things - that is all we need. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
-Letters to a Young Poet
If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything will become easier for you. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature. (Auguste Rodin)
One day in the country / Is worth a month in town (Christina Rossetti)
Nature is neutral. Nature doesn't care how much money a person makes. (Veronica Roth)
When I go out into the countryside and see the sun and the green and everything flowering, I say to myself, Yes indeed, all that belongs to me! (Henri Rousseau)
I'm exchanging molecules every 30 days with the natural world and in a spiritual sense I know I am a part of it and take my photographs from that emotional feeling within me, rather than from an emotional distance as a spectator. (Galen Rowell)
These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message. (Galen Rowell)
We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again. (Rumi)
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore. (Rumi)
I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me. (John Ruskin)
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery. (John Ruskin)
Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art. (Bertrand Russell)
If we are alienated from nature, then we are alienated from ourselves. (Linda Saccoccio)
One might say that science itself, and civilization and art, are all about different orderings of the world – to contain it, and to make it in some sense intelligible, communicable. And bearable. (Oliver Sacks)
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)
-Wings of Life...
Once the bees disappear, so do we. It reminds us that we are a part of nature - and not separate from it. (Louis Schwartzberg)
Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives. (Albert Schweitzer)
It is amazing how nature provides the answers to painting problems. How colours react to each other, shadows, filtered light etc. It's akin to a philosophical dialogue. (Jo Scott-B)
Mindful of the vision and artistry of the masters, no artist can ever hope to out-compose nature. (Ian Semple)
Birch trees are inspirational. They are the angels of the forest. (Eric Serritella)
I am nature. Nature is me. What I create is what I must create. That I create it is fundamental. I am both anonymous and very precious since I belong to all growth which is life. Therefore I must grow well. What I shape I must shape well. (Jack Shadbolt)
One touch of nature... makes all the world kin. (William Shakespeare)
Nature is the best and really the only real vocabulary that an artist can legitimately work with. (Nelson Shanks)
There is a harmony in autumn, and a lustre in its sky. (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity. (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn. (Bernie S. Siegal)
The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world. (Georges Simenon)
Nature is what you see plus what you think about it. (John Sloan)
No one can improve on nature's landscapes. I feel I've hit the mark when I've captured a balance between mood, look, and feel... when viewers say they sense the desert heat, or the chill of a mountain snowfall. (Matt Smith)
See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all. (Socrates)
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd. (Baruch Spinoza)
Nature with its myriad lights and moods is the main source of all my work. (St-Gilles)
Whatever is natural admits of variety. (Madame de Stael)
The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. (Freya Stark)
Trees are literally a recording of light, growing, through photosynthesis, toward the source. We relate the silhouetted black tree bodies to the black of written information, the black ink on the pages of books through thousands of years of transcribed thought and creation. (Doug and Mike Starn)
All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature. (Rudolf Steiner)
Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise! (Wallace Stevens)
The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening. (Wallace Stevens)
Standing up here on the hill away from all humans - seeing these Wonders taking place before one's eyes - so silently... watching the silence of Nature. No school - no church - is as good a teacher as the eye understandingly seeing what's before it. I believe this more firmly than ever. (Alfred Stieglitz)
-The Redwoods...
To be like these, straight, true and fine, / to make our world like theirs, a shrine; / Sink down, Oh, traveler, on your knees, / God stands before you in these trees. (Joseph B. Strauss)
-from Gitanjali...
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures... shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. (Rabindranath Tagore)
But who can paint / Like Nature? Can imagination boast, / Amid its gay creation, hues like hers? (James Thomson)
We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain... (Henry David Thoreau)
In wilderness is preservation of the world. (Henry David Thoreau)
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)
As I look back on my fondness for the outdoors, and specifically the elements in nature that I find visually stimulating, I am surprised at how often the theme of dead trees arise. I guess it's that each one seems to have a story of its own, representing many years of living through everything that nature could throw at them. (Cory Trepanier)
All that is presented to us in nature exhibits the fecundity of the world and hence the beginning and the possibility of what can be, but also something that may not be. (Stewart Turcotte)
-Roughing It...
Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. (Mark Twain)
Nature is not as you imagine her: / She's not a mold, nor yet a soulless mask - / She is made up of soul and freedom / She is made up of love and speech... (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)
I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken. (John Updike)
One paints from nature not in order to copy, but to express feelings of grandeur. (Georges Vantongerloo)
Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it. (Giorgio Vasari)
In our own time it has been seen... that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature. (Giorgio Vasari)
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds. (Gore Vidal)
He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature. (Leonardo da Vinci)
Nature has always had more force than education. (Voltaire)
If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
We perceive nature through the senses, which give us images of forms of colour, sounds etc. A form which exists only in relation to another form on its own, it does not exist. (Edouard Vuillard)
I am inspired by experiences in nature that I term sensuous: the feeling of sheltering trees overhead, the translucence of leaves with sunlight coming through them, the awe of rock formations above and around me. (Dona LeCrone Walston)
Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art. (Izaac Walton)
Autumn: when mother nature expresses herself, painting from a palette so rich
and full the eyes do dance with delight. (Kendall D. Ward)
The natural world is a perfect expression of perfect equilibrium and balance. (W. David Ward)
Reintegration with Nature, which we are, is the recovery of spontaneity. (Wei Wu Wei)
The perfume of the flowers and of the bay tree are wafted on high, like incense. The birds sing sweet songs of praise to their Creator. In the tops of the trees, the soughing of the wind is like the hushed prayers of the multitude in some vast cathedral. Here the heart of man becomes impressionable. (William Wendt)
-Random Notes on Photography, 1922...
...for the obvious reason that nature - unadulterated and unimproved by man - is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement... (Edward Weston)
Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong... (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)
Outdoors is where the great mystery lies, so going into nature should be a searching and humbling experience, like going to church. (Skip Whitcomb)
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)
Mother Nature is the true artist and our job... is to allow her to shine. (Marco Pierre White)
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. (Walt Whitman)
Nature constantly imitates art. (Oscar Wilde)
Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!' (Robin Williams)
Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence. (Tennessee Williams)
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. (Edward O. Wilson)
Being tuned in to the inherent steadiness of the seasons gives us the reassurance that most events in our lives happen not at random, but within a logical and sequenced framework. (Victoria Witte)
I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times / The still, sad music of humanity. (William Wordsworth)
Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her. (William Wordsworth)
Wherever nature led: more like a man / Flying from something that he dreads, than one / Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then / ...pleasures of my boyish days... all gone by / To me was all in all. –I cannot paint / What then I was... (William Wordsworth)
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. (Frank Lloyd Wright)
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. (Andrew Wyeth)
When the mind is attuned to the cosmic law, all the laws of nature are in perfect harmony with the aspirations of the mind. (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)
Read nature; nature is a friend to truth. (Edward Young)
The course of Nature is the art of God. (Edward Young)
By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. (Lin Yutang)
Nobody is painting from nature... Painting is painting and you cannot copy nature. Yet without nature there is no painting. Even abstract painting cannot exist without it. (Yossef Zaritsky)
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