Modern life and technology have made it easy for us to spend too much time indoors, fixated on screens and being sedentary. It can be difficult to find the motivation to get up and get outside, but time spent in nature is always worth it. Recent research shows that even short bursts of exercise can help counter the effects of our modern lifestyles, and increasingly, studies suggest that spending time in the great outdoors can improve attention span, lower stress, and even help us have more empathy and compassion.
Connection with the natural world has long been an inspiration for writers and artists. The diversity and complexity — not to mention the vast mystery — of Mother Nature can offer perspective and stillness, and be very grounding. With that in mind, we’ve collected 15 quotes to help you ponder and appreciate all the natural world has to offer — and maybe even motivate you to go outside.
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.Edward Abbey
I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.Henry David Thoreau
I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”Sylvia Plath
The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.Jack Kerouac
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.Rachel Carson
Hiking is not escapism; it’s realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong.Jennifer Pharr Davis
If we surrendered / to earth’s intelligence / we could rise up rooted, like trees.Rainer Maria Rilke
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.Ralph Waldo Emerson
I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.Helen Keller
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.Walt Whitman
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.John Lubbock
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.Wallace Stevens
The natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.David Attenborough
Nature can bring you to stillness. That is its gift to you.Eckhart Tolle
The poetry of the earth is never dead.John Keats
Featured image credit: Mikhail Blavatskiy/ iStock
