Naturalist Quotes

“My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.”
― Oliver Sacks

“John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe

[Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]”
― John Muir

“To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret.”
― James Hutton

“We made love outdoors
Without a roof, I like most,
Without stove, to make love, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and gushing of dew.”
― Roman Payne

“But in the early 1970s, we were not birdwatching. We were birding, and that made all the difference. We were out to seek, to discover, to chase, to learn, to find as many different kinds of birds as possible — and, in friendly competition, to try to find more of them than the next birder. We became a community of birders, with the complications that human societies always have; and although it was the birds that had brought us together, our story became a human story after all.”
― Kenn Kaufman, Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder

“It seems to me that you might create any sort of character in a novel and there would be at least one person in the world just like him. We humans are simply incapable of imagining non-human actions or behavior. It's the writer's fault if we don't believe in his characters as human beings.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Sanshirō

“What is it that drew us to the hollow tonight? What crazy kind of species is it that leaves a warm home on a rainy night to ferry salamanders across a road? It's tempting to call it altruism, but it's not. There is nothing selfless about it. This night heaps rewards on the givers as well as the recipients. We get to be there, to witness this amazing rite, and, for an evening, to enter into relationship with other beings, as different from ourselves as we can imagine.
It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness" - estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night. For a moment as we walked this road, those barriers dissolved and we began to relieve the loneliness and know each other once again.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Wajah alam merupakan sesuatu yang tidak dapat dikenal”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“Jem gazed up into the proper deep blue he knew well from Dorsetshire, coupled with the vivid green of the roadside grass and shrubs, and found himself smiling at these colors that were so natural and yet shouted louder than any London ribbon or dress.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Burning Bright

“Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world– fresh vision that, though it is avian, can accompany you home and alter your life. They will do this for you even if you don't know their names– though such knowing is a thoughtful gesture. They will do this for you if you watch them.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds

“No human, no matter how ancient, or how popular, can be above the laws of Nature.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Education Decree

“With my new habit of carrying binoculars everywhere, I feel imbued with a readiness to see, an attitude that my life itself is a kind of field trip. The urban naturalist has the terrific luxury of stepping out her door and into "the field," without long rides or carpools, or putting money in for gas and Dairy Queen. When does the field trip being? Whenever we start paying attention.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

“If one’s argument for civilization holds that wild predators should never roam in broad daylight through the boroughs of America’s largest, loudest, most radically urban metropolis, then, truly, the end of civilization had arrived on paw prints in the snow.”
― Dan Flores, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History

“I took another road, past the old sugar works and the water wheel that had not turned for years. I went to parts of Coulibri that I had not seen, where there was no road, no path, no track. And if the razor grass cut my legs and arms I would think 'It's better than people.' Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin - once I saw a snake. All better than people.
Better, better, better than people.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“As we work to know the life that surrounds us, we stand in a lineage of naturalists — past, present, and even future. We join the "cloud of witnesses" who refuse to let the more-than-human world pass unnoticed.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

“The phaenomena afforded by trades, are a part of the history of nature, and therefore may both challenge the naturalist's curiosity and add to his knowledge, Nor will it suffice to justify learned men in the neglect and contempt of this part of natural history, that the men, from whom it must be learned, are illiterate mechanicks... is indeed childish, and too unworthy of a philosopher, to be worthy of an honest answer.”
― Robert Boyle

“From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence. The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth

“Aspire to inspire, before we expire

By Mamoona Ghaffar”
― Mamoona Ghaffar

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains — beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.”
― John Muir

“Sonnet of Nature

What do the rivers do?
Give water for our thirst.
What do the trees do?
Give air for our lungs.
What do the animals do?
Give food for our tummy.
What do the flowers do?
Give fragrance for our body.
After taking everything,
From every member of nature,
What do we pompous idiots do?
Destroy all natural order.
It's high time to get our act together.
Nature doesn't need us, but we need her.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“I realize that in giving birth, managing a household, raising a child, and composting potato peels in a city, I have learned some things about wildness that even Thoreau could not have known.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

“Still, standing vulnerable and open to the possibility of the unknown, which can be found here, if it doesn't find you first.”
― Danielle Rohr, Denali Skies

“We have three weeks left; before the season will end, and this will end, and everyone will go, and it will never be again, at least not with us, and the way we are together. So, we have these nights, and we hold them so tightly, so dearly in our hearts.”
― Danielle Rohr, Denali Skies

“Still, I must admit, that I suspect these coincidences, these bending branches of charity are more complicated and somehow related to this place, Denali. I didn't just pursue her. She called to me, and I answered the call, as natural and with such strong urgency as the migrating birds that flock here, seeking summer resting grounds and absolution.”
― Danielle Rohr, Denali Skies

“I’m an old naturalist. I defend all the roots that God has planted deep in the earth — and also the ones He has planted forever in the human soul — call it a need for justice, for freedom, for dignity . . .”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“If you can look at a phenomenon of nature, and be struck by awe without being struck by superstition, know that you have finally grown up.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love

“People used to say Evie was weird, but she didn't care. She said she liked weird things."
This professed love of the weird might go some way to explaining Evie's particular interests in the world of fauna and flora. Not for her the "obvious" choices like koalas and kangaroos; her favorite animals were monotremes. And while she loved the smells and sights of gums and banksias and wattles, it was the primeval expanse of the forest floor that excited her. Evie was mystified when her classmates spoke of magic and make-believe, and by the stories Reverend Lawson told in church on Sundays of water turning to wine and angels appearing to men. Why, she puzzled, did people seek refuge in such fantasies, when the natural world offered endless wonder? She delighted in entering the cool, dark realm of the bush after rain, searching through sopping leaf muck to discover that a whole new variety of fungi had sprouted overnight, an array of unimaginable shapes and sizes and colors waiting to be explored and catalogued.”
― Kate Morton, Homecoming

“Looked around at the wind-blasted peaks and the swirls of mist moving past them. It was hard to take my eyes away. I had been up on some of them, and I would be up there again. There was something different to see each time, and something different from each one. All those streamlets to explore and all those tracks to follow through the glare of the high basins and over the saddles. Where did they lead? What was beyond? What stories were written in the snow? I watched an eagle turn slowly and fall away, quick-sliding across the dark stands of spruce that marched in uneven ranks up the slopes. His piercing cry came back on the wind. I thought of the man at his desk staring down from a city window at the ant colony streets below, the man toiling beside the thudding and rumbling of machinery, the man commuting to his job the same way at the same time each morning, staring at but not seeing the poles and the wires and the dirty buildings flashing past. Perhaps each man had his moment during the day when his vision came, a vision not unlike the one before me.”
― Richard Proenekke, More Readings from One Man's Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980

“Already we have on show a number of creatures which no other zoo possesses and we hope in the future when funds permit to concentrate on those species which are threatened with extinction.
Many of the animals on show are ones I collected myself. This is, as I said before, the best part of having one’s own zoo; one can bring the animals back for it, watch their progress, watch them breed, go out and visit them at any hour of the day or night. This is the selfish pleasure of one’s own zoo. But also I hope that, in a small way, I am interesting people in animal life and in its conservation. If I accomplish this I will consider that I have achieved something worthwhile.”
― Gerald Durrell, A Zoo in My Luggage

“Law of Nature is its lack of meaning,
as well as its lack of morality.
We needed an image to bear the blame,
and be the imaginary steward of our destiny.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Pocket Book of Consciousness