Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of appreciating and respecting the natural world around us.
Henry Beston's quote encourages a deep connection and reverence for the Earth and its diverse landscapes. It suggests that by engaging with and loving nature—its plains, valleys, hills, and seas—we can find peace and solace, allowing our spirits to rest in the beauty of solitude offered by the natural world. This connection fosters a sense of responsibility for preserving the environment and appreciating its gifts.
In practice
This quote can be shared during Earth Day celebrations to inspire appreciation for the planet.
If there is one thing clear about the centuries dominated by the factory and the wheel, it is that although the machine can make everything from a spoon to a landing-craft, a natural joy in earthly living is something it never has and never will be able to manufacture.
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity.
The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter woods.
Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night.
When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness nor integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it.
It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination
A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.
I just think that gardening is about the future, a slow thing, that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.
What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty.
There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.
What freezings I have felt, what dark days seen,_x000D_ _x000D_ What old December's bareness everywhere!
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