“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923)
“And I replied unto all the things which encompass the door of my flesh: "Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something of Him." And they cried out with a loud voice, "He made us." My questioning them, was my thoughts on them: and their form of beauty gave the answer.”
— Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine (trans. E. B. Pusey)
“I love the sea, especially when it foams and roars, and these last days it has been furious.”
— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. Modeste Tchaikovsky (trans. Rosa Newmarch, 1906) (1861)
“If ever you have come upon a grove that is full of ancient trees which have grown to an unusual height, shutting out a view of the sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“[S]hould one not have patience, not learn patience from nature, learn patience from seeing the wheat slowly come up, the growing of things — should one think oneself such a hugely dead thing that one believed one wouldn’t grow? Should one deliberately discourage one’s development?”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1883)
“Knowing that Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, / Through all the years of this our life, to lead / From joy to joy”
— William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (1798) (1798)
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
— Anonymous (Hebrew Psalmist), The Book of Psalms (King James Version) (1611)
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons—the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”
— Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works (1882)
“Roused mentally by the thunder of the waves upon the iron cliffs below, the stupendous majesty of Nature burst upon me with greater force than ever before, and woke anew the tempest in my heart--the awful wrestling of Life and Death.”
— Hector Berlioz, The Life of Hector Berlioz as Written by Himself in His Letters and Memoirs (trans. Katharine F. Boult, 1903) (1831)
“For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Seek your examples in life, the great Shtchepkin told us.”
— Konstantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art (1924)
“In fine, it is impossible to prevent, and only great simplicity can hope to prevent, human nature doing what it has once set its mind upon, by force of law or by any other deterrent force whatsoever.”
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (trans. Richard Crawley)
Every quote in this collection was verified
against its original public-domain source — the letter, journal, poem or treatise it
truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions.
Start free to bring these voices into your daily practice.