We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

The earth has music for those who listen.

Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. Why do you wish to grasp the fruit before its season?

If you tamper with it, you will ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you will lose it.

We do not 'come into' this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

You are not something that is a visitor on the earth and doesn't belong here. You are the earth.

The water does not intend to reflect the moon, and the moon has no desire to be reflected in the water.

Wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection; the water has no mind to receive their image.

The world is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects.

The clouds in the sky do not worry about where they are going. They go where the wind takes them, and in doing so, they water the earth.

If you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water.

When you listen to the birds singing, do you ask what they mean? The song of the bird is its own meaning.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Every leaf in the forest carries the watermark of eternity.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

Between every two pines there is a door to a new world.

Going to the mountains is going home.

The flower is not conscious of its perfume; it simply is.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

The river flows because it does not cling to its banks.

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

The earth is a sacred stage for the evolution of spirit.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept away.

Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change?

Everything comes from the cosmos, exists in the cosmos, and returns to the cosmos.

A branch cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also.

Look at the stars and feel their unhurried eternity.

All things are changing; you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner dying every day.

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

If the foot of the trees were not tied to the earth, of what journeys they would be capable!

Look at the moon, how it illuminates the world without asking for a reward.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.