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.
Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.
My job, my mission, the reason I’ve been put onto this planet, is to save wildlife. And I thank you for comin’ with me. Yeah, let’s get 'em!
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
A golf course should aspire to generate as much energy as it consumes - golf should be leading the way toward energy net zero.
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.
Animal life, sombre mystery. All nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends, who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.