“You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific
about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft;
a certain free margin, and even vagueness — perhaps ignorance,
credulity — helps your enjoyment of these things…”
Walt Whitman, 1819-1892, Specimen Days, “Birds – And a Caution”
proclaimed the “Greatest of all American poets”
a mere four years after his death
“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone,
but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.”
Martin Luther, 1483-1546,
German theologian and church reformer
“I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.”
Emma Goldman, 1869-1940
aka ‘Red Emma,’ a Lithuanian-born anarchist
known for her writings and speeches
Blue Hole – Upper Falls, Carter County, TN
”The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside,
somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be…”
Anne Frank, 1929-1945
Jewish girl who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family
during the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII
Water Strider, Ramsey Creek Falls, Buffalo Mountain Camp
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, Inversnaid
Jesuit priest and English poet
Flower in Conservatory at Biltmore Estates, NC
“…For the eyes of faith, every created thing
manifests the grace and providence of Abba.”
Brennan Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel
author, priest, speaker
“The whole of nature is a sacrament
pointing to a reality far beyond itself.”
Henri Nouwen, 1923-1996
Creative Ministry (Seeds of Hope)
Dutch Catholic priest and author
Bass Lake, Biltmore Estates
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers, Sullivan Co., TN
“I can enjoy society in a room;
but out of doors, nature is company enough for me.”
William Hazlitt, 1778-1830
English writer and literary critic
Amish farm, Ohio
“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure
is the most perfect refreshment.”
Jane Austen, 1775-1817
English novelist
Sunset from Buffalo Mountain Park, Johnson City, TN
“Sunshine has no budget, the sea no red tape.”
Jareb Teague
Dogwood blossoms
“To one who has been long in city pent,
‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.”
John Keats, 1795-1821, Sonnet XIV
one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement
“A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822,
“The Sensitive Plant,” 1820
One of the major English Romantic poets
“The tulip and the butterfly
Appear in gayer coats than I:
Let me be dressed fine as I will,
Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still.”
Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
recognized as the “Father of English Hymns”
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
German-born theoretical physicist
Winner of 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics
Tulip
“Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed…
if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower,
and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.”
James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891
American Romantic poet, satirist, abolitionist
”I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me — I am happy.”
Hamlin Garland, 1860-1940,
American novelist, poet, essayist
“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, 1837-1921,
American naturalist and essayist
Doe River near Roan Mountain State Park, TN
“As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest,
or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream,
the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.”
Stephen Graham, 1884-1975, The Gentle Art of Tramping
English novelist and travel writer
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries
of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”
Rachel Carson, 1907-1964
American marine biologist and nature writer
“Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain.”
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
American author, naturalist, philosopher
Best known for “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience”
View from Round Bald, Roan Mountain, TN
“Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.”
George Wherry, 1852-1928
Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot
Dogwood blossoms
“After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private,
individual, selfish miracles when every year
there are miracles like white dogwood.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1906-2001
Poppy field at Farmhouse Gallery, Unicoi, TN
“That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone,
that we are more deeply inserted into existence than
the course of a single life would lead us to believe.”
John Berger, 1926-
“The Sense of Sight”
art critic, novelist, painter
Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers, Sullivan Co., TN
“Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior,
but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex
every time he looks at a flower.”
Alan C. Kay, American computer scientist
