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.
What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn And tied her with fences and dragged her down
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
I think, on a personal level, everybody, when you go through the checkout line after you get your groceries and they say, 'Paper or plastic?' We should be saying, 'Neither one.' We should have our own cloth bags.
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.
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