The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. ---Joseph Campbell- (in The Heartbeat of a Drum)

It is up to us to take care of this planet, it is our only home. To betray nature is to betray us. To save nature is to save us. --Prince Ea (in Prince Ea: Three Seconds)

One who is obedient to nature receives the blessings of nature. --Soetsu Yanagi (in Shokunin and Devotion)

Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Life as a Cup of Tea)

"The capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad people and good people, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this." --Hui-Neng (in Untitled)

Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice. --Cicero (in Untitled)

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all. --Helen Keller (in Untitled)

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. --John Muir (in Untitled)

"Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success." --Oscar Wilde (in Untitled)

Things are going to change -- that is their nature. One day you succeed, one day you fail; one day you are at the top, another day you are at the bottom. But something in you is always exactly the same, and that something is your reality. --Osho (in Untitled)

The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the skylife nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness that underlies the whole of life and death. --Sogyal Rinpoche (in Untitled)

The boundary between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion. Oneness is reality. --Charlene Spretnak (in FBI Agent A Reluctant Hero)

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. --Einstein (in Untitled)

This is the true joy in life, being recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for it’s own sake; Life is no brief candle to me, it is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for a moment. I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. --George Bernard Shaw (in A Splendid Torch)

Security and changelessness are fabricated by the ego-dominated mind and do not exist in nature. --Unknown (in Untitled)

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them. --John Ruskin (in Untitled)

The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens. --Anthony De Mello (in Meet the 'Dubbawalas')

Each day of human life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each movement is etched with nature’s grand design~ do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things. --Morehei Ueshiba (founder of Aikido) (in Untitled)

We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. --Thich Nhat Hanh (in Untitled)

Holy Mother Earth, the trees and all nature, are witnesses of your thoughts and deeds. --Winnebago Saying (in Untitled)

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is a superstition. It does not exist in nature --Helen Keller (in Untitled)

As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of every one there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form 'Who am I?' is the prinicpal means. --Ramana Maharishi (in Deep Sleep)

Consider this. All the ants of the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productivity nourishes plants, animals and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do. --Michael Braungart (in Ants of the Planet)

To explain that which is simple can be difficult indeed. If we can understand even one simple thing in depth, we will have greatly expanded our capacity for comprehending the nature of the universe and life itself. --David Hawkins (in Measuring Emotions)

When in the spring the withered gray of the fields gives way to a carpet of green, this is because millions of shoots are springing up anew from the roots. Our age must achieve spiritual renewal. It can do so only in one way: the masses of the people must reflect upon the nature of true goodness. Out of such reflection, new principles and ideas will inevitably arise. As the trees bear the same fruit anew year after year, so from generation to generation all worthwhile ideas must be born anew in the thinking of mankind. --Albert Schweitzer (in Springing Up Anew)

Multitudinousness of objects have no reality in themselves but are only seen of the mind and, therefore, are of the nature of maya and a dream. --Buddha (in Your Wish Is Its Command)

Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object. But when you look at it more closely, you will see that it has no independent existence. When you contemplate it you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretch across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it all the seasons all form part of the tree. As you think about the tree more and more you will discover that everything in the universe helps make the tree what it is; that it cannot be isolated from anything else and at every moment its nature is subtly changing. --Soygal Rinpoche (in Universe Makes The Tree)

Life is a mystery until you touch the reality beyond the veil. When the mind is still and the search is intense, we have the vision to see reality all around us. Every person you meet is in a world you could know. Nature waits for our entrance, whether it is a forest or a rose. All around us is the presence waiting for a quiet mind and an open heart. Walking through the markets and riding in the subway, we can be close to the reality. We are moving through various states of reality during the day. --Herman Rednick (in Reality Beyond The Veil)

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in The Penguin Escape)

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. --Charles Darwin (in Chocolate)

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day. --Alex Noble (in Untitled)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. --Peyton Conway March (in Fairy Godmother)

One Touch of nature makes the whole world kin. --William Shakespeare - Troilus and Cressida (in Green Clean)

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (in Sorry's State of Affairs)

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Reading A Blade of Grass)

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. --Henry Ward Beecher (in The Artist Who Was A Horse)

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story. --Linda Hogan (in Japan's Carbon Footprint Labels)

An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth. --Auguste Rodin (in One Woman's Artistic Gift)

We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted. --Theodore Roosevelt (in Temporary Urban PARK(ing))

I have never come across anything in nature that is superfluous and does not fulfill a function. There seems to be no redundancy or unemployment in these natural worlds. Be it rock or plant, bird or tree, or even the bacteria within the soil, everything occupies a vital place in the dance of life. --Michael Lindfield (in Eco-Cities For 400 Million People)

Give like the rose gives its perfume -- effortlessly, unconditionally because it is its own nature. --Swami Vivekananda (in $10,000 Tip On A $26 Tab)

There is something deep within our nature. A guiding light if you will. A voice that always speaks of goodness. A voice that is always moving us towards more love, towards more life. Can we hear it? Sitting in silence is an attempt to become in tune with your own self, with your own voice. --Sukh Chugh (in One Million Meditate for Peace)

In this new world, you and I make it up as we go along, not because we lack expertise or planning skills, but because that is the nature of reality. Reality changes shape and meaning because of our activity. And it is constantly new. We are required to be there, as active participants. It can’t happen without us and nobody can do it for us. --Margaret Wheatley (in The Business of Changing the World)

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to. . . . The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures. --Vincent Van Gogh (in A Young Bird-Lover's Opportune Shot)

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. --John Muir (in Creating Breathing Places)

To be the agent whose touch changes nature from a wild force to a work of art is inspiration of the highest order. --Bob Rodale (in A 17-year-old's Life-saving Breakthrough)

To live more simply is to unburden our lives -- to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direct, unpretentious and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. --Duane Elgin (in A Dollar A Year CEO)

Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility and commitment. --Ross Perot (in Lessons From A Dyslexic CEO)

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (in Harvard Professor Resolves Ethiopian Crisis)

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. --William Shakespeare (in The Science Of Sleep and Scent)