Quotes & Sayings About Sitting In Nature

As you begin to Awaken.. You discover yourself sitting in nature.. flowing like the river.. Trying to understand the purpose.. then realizing "Nature is Happening, that is its purpose".. You are just like the river flowing through nature.. Your purpose is to be like nature. Start Now.. in the precious moments.. for its the only time that exists. — Jonathan Bailey

And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes. — John Milton

I came in at half past eleven. Since then I have been sitting in an easy chair like a fool. I could do nothing. I hear nothing but your voice. I am like a fool hearing you call me 'Dear.' I offended two men today by leaving them coolly. I wanted to hear your voice, not theirs. When I am with you I leave aside my contemptuous, suspicious nature. I wish I felt your head on my shoulder. — James Joyce

They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. That nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. — Sitting Bull

Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner."
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"When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. "
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"Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness."
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"You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice."
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"The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. — Shunryu Suzuki

not sit while the wind went by. Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer? — Henry David Thoreau

The one sure thing about Marbury is that it's a horrible place. But so is right here, too. And there's certain benefit in the obviousness of its brutality, because in Marbury there's no doubt about the nature of things: good and evil, or guilt and innocence, for example. Not like here, where you could be sitting in the park next to a doctor or someone and not have any idea what a sick and dangerous sonofabitch he really is. Because we always expect things to be proper, even if we haven't learned our fucking lesson that it just doesn't work out like that all the time. — Andrew Smith

However, on glimpsing in shop window realized outfit insane. Now am on bus, remember also that corset-ike nature of dress is torture when sitting down. One's rolls of fat are squezzed together like dough being kneaded in a food processor. — Helen Fielding

Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative. — Alexandra Kleeman

The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [ ... ]. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You must pray with all your might. That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel with eyes wide open while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God. This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame. — William Booth

I think for me to do a traditional sitting meditation I would really have to spend a couple weeks working at it. The only way I know how to efficiently, effectively meditate is by walking in nature. — Brett Dennen

Singing at the Edge of Need by Susan Laughter Meyers (fragment)
Three things I turned my back to: light,
the past, the trunk of an old tree.
One by one each unfastened itself.
To sit is to present when the roll is called.
I knew that. I wore my hat of straw, fringed
like fingers sifting a breeze. My hat
collecting a thousand thoughts ...
... I had no map
and few lessons yet to guide me.
I was a study of questions. O Grandmother,
I was small, sitting in the midst of wildness,
a child thrilling at the boss of thunder.
A rustle of leaves, moss tipping at me-
I was small, I was hunger, I was thirst-
wings flitting in a brush pile. O Grandmother,
I was small, kneeling in the midst of wonder,
quaking and singing at the edge of need. — Susan Laughter Meyers

I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong ... The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion. — Ursula K. Le Guin

In the event of a change in cabin pressure, the flight attendant on the video was saying, you put your oxygen mask on first, pulling the cord, and then you helped others in your party who needed your assistance. The video showed a nice-looking dad tugging the oxygen mask over his own face, his placid daughter sitting quietly beside him, breathing bad air.
What kind of idiot came up with that rule? The didn't understand human nature at all.
She imagined the compartment filling slowly with smoke and Noah beside her, gasping. Did they really think that she could straighten the mask on her own face and breathe in clean air while her asthmatic son struggled to take a breath? The assumption was that she and her child were two different entities with seperate hearts and lungs and minds. They didn't realise that when your child was gasping for air, you felt your own breath trapped in your chest. — Sharon Guskin

I think violence, cynicism, brutality and fashion are the staples of our diet. I think in the grand history of story-telling, going back to people sitting around fires, the dark side of human nature has always been very important. Movies are part of that tradition. — Eric Stoltz

In all nature there seemed to be a feeling of hopelessness and pain. The earth, like a ruined woman sitting alone in a dark room and trying not to think of the past, was brooding over memories of spring and summer and apathetically waiting for the inevitable winter. Wherever one looked, on all sides, nature seemed like a dark, infinitely deep, cold pit from which neither Kirilov nor Abogin nor the red half-moon could escape ... — Anton Chekhov

Although, since days when we had been at school together, I had been seeing him on and off - very much on and off - for more than twenty years by this time, I found when I worked under him there were still comparatively unfamiliar sides to Widmerpool. Like most persons viewed through the eyes of a subordinate, his nature was to be appreciated with keener insight from below. This new angle of observation revealed, for example, how difficult he was to work with, particularly on account of a secretiveness that derived from perpetual fear, almost obsession, that tasks completed by himself might be attributed to the work of someone else. On that first morning at Division, Widmerpool spoke at length of his own methods. He was already sitting at his table when I arrived in the room. Removing his spectacles, he began to polish them vigorously, assuming at the same time a manner of hearty military geniality. — Anthony Powell

On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy. — Allan Bloom

You fall into thought while staring at the green foliage back here - so much damn green that it envelops you in its cruddy fist - and the thoughts aren't too good, either - thoughts of sitting on the toilet - eating a sandwich - standing in line at a grocery store - watching an episode of Cheaters - doing laundry - staring at your face in a mirror - shaving it - snorting crushed pills - falling in love - death - all death - and the green shrubbery carries you away with it. — Brian Alan Ellis

All this is the carpet of life. You are sitting on it. Each of those knots represents one plant or animal. They, and the air we breathe, the water we drink, and our groceries are not manufactured. They are produced by what we call nature. This rug represents that nature. If something happens in Asia or Africa and a cheetah disappears, that is one knot from the carpet. If you understand that, you'll realize that we are living on a very limited number of species and resources, on which our life depends." In — Alan Weisman

Meditate or spend silent time in nature with your partner. When going for a walk or sitting in the car or at home, become comfortable with being in stillness together. Stillness cannot and need not be created. Just be receptive to the stillness that is already there, but is usually obscured by mental noise. — Eckhart Tolle

I could understand how such stories of horror can spread, like a wild fire. Such was the nature of rumor. People seemed to love to be frightened especially when, in their heart of hearts, they knew that they were safe. How many truly believed in vampires, I pondered? How many truly believed that they were risking their life by sitting up in the gods to watch a stage performance? — Raymond Buckland

When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way. — Richard Louv

There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours. — Diet Eman

Its true. Im a simple person. Some people tend to live from trauma to trauma, and that energizes them. I have a hectic schedule, but my mind seeks simplicity - like being in nature, a long bike ride, or sitting on the back porch. — Amy Grant

The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality. — Wendell Berry

How could he hate the Jews and yet feel sick when they were attacked? Louis hated peasants, too, apparently, and yet he had no problem sitting beside Jeanne - hoisting her in the air and dancing even. Jacob tried to turn this over in his head, around and around, like the cartwheels beneath him. But after a while, he gave up. People were too strange to understand, he decided. They were like life. And also that cheese. Too many things at once. — Adam Gidwitz

I am the king. You're the knight sitting at my round table. That's the nature of our relationship when it comes to war or other conflict resolution in this family. — Sarah Black

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science. — Richard Dawkins

There were orchids for sale, for one and two and three and five hundred dollars, a madhouse of orchids in every color, in every shape, with wide leaves and skinny leaves and no leaves at all, with fat jutting lips and lips cupped like thimbles, and with blackish-red hoods and freckles, with ruffles, with pleats, with corkscrew curls, big as fists, small as fingernails, smelling of honey, grass, citrus, cinnamon, or of nothing, not a smell at all but just the heavy warm quality that air has after it has been sitting in a flower. — Susan Orlean

Any role that's proactive is a great role, and action roles are by their very nature proactive. You get to do stuff. I hate sitting in a corner - I'd much prefer an action role in a popcorn movie rather than pining in a corner not doing anything. — Helen Mirren

Don't spend your days sitting around waiting for something to happen. Get outside and make it happen!Live like a warrior, be at one with nature, fearless in the moment....because this moment will never happen again so don't waste it! — Karen Gibbs

Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science. — Richard Dawkins

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one's life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie ... Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics ... — Barry Lopez

Sometimes difficulty clarifies things. And sometimes realizing that the road you've chosen is a demanding one gives you the courage to stay on that road. It reveals the nature of our relationship with God. It sounds cute and comforting to say "God is in control," and people who say that may imagine sitting on their daddy's lap behind the wheel of the family car, going "Vroom vroomy vroom!" while Daddy does the steering. In reality, when God is in control, it feels more like one of those movies where some amateur has to step up and land the airplane or steer the ship to safety through a crashing storm, with an expert giving them instructions remotely through a headset. In theory, following the expert's instructions will help us get in safely; but our fear, panic, self-doubt, and lack of skill are not exactly comforting. Yes, God is in control, but we're the ones who are in for a rough ride. — Simcha Fisher

It's obvious. Look - see? The black kids are over there hanging out with the black kids. The jocks have their territory. Mary Ida and those other sorry girls are standing over there at the water fountain where you know they'll always be. We're sitting here on the bleachers, where boys like us always sit. It's only the first day of school, but we're already stuck where we'll all be for the rest of the year. Who said you had to go there? Nobody. But you did. You went automatically. You had no choice. It's like, I don't know, in your blood cells or something. That's what I mean, a law of nature. The universal law governing the motion of bodies at school. — George Bishop

To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand — Seneca.

I'm in love with red. I think it's such a passionate color. Every flag of every country pretty much has red it it. It's power, there's no fence sitting with red. Either you love it or you don't. I think its blood and strength and life. I do love red. I love all colors. Great shades of blue, you find them in nature. They're all magic. — Bryan Batt

The essential Taoist approach to life is captured in the phrase ching-jing wu-wei, literally, "sitting still doing nothing." Doing nothing doesn't mean sitting around all day like a bump on a log, but rather doing only those things that really need to be done and doing them in a way that does not run counter to the natural order of Tao and the patterned flow of cosmic forces. It means engaging only in spontaneous, unpremeditated activity, doing things purely for their own sake rather than for ulterior motives, and living in harmony with rather than trying to conquer nature. — Daniel P. Reid

It was cold in the street and I crossed to the lighted blaze of shops in Rue Fuad. In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on it, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought it: had it opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled spring soil, dedicated vines. I felt that Melissa would never understand this. I should have to pretend I had lost the money. I did not see at first the great car which she had abandoned in the street with its engine running. She came into the shop with swift and resolute suddenness and said, with the air of authority that Lesbians, or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: 'What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?' - or some such sally which I have forgotten. — Lawrence Durrell

Soon they were all sitting on the rocky ledge, which was still warm, watching the sun go down into the lake. It was the most beautiful evening, with the lake as blue as a cornflower and the sky flecked with rosy clouds. They held their hard-boiled eggs in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the other, munching happily. There was a dish of salt for everyone to dip their eggs into.

'I don't know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors,' said George. — Enid Blyton

Awaken your senses by sitting in nature, the earth aligns the soul of those of sit. — Nikki Rowe

So, I said, when does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here. — Jerry Spinelli

Your anger is like a flower. In the beginning you may not understand the nature of your anger, or why it has come up. But if you know how to embrace it with the energy of mindfulness, it will begin to open. You may be sitting, following your breathing, or you may be practicing walking meditation to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace your anger. After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skillfulness. — Nhat Hanh

That truth which you swallow from others will not be yours ... you have to realize truth and work it our for yourself according to your own nature ... All must struggle to be individuals-strong, standing on your own feet, thinking your own thoughts, realizing you own Self. No use swallowing doctrines others pass on-standing up together like soldiers in jail, sitting down together, all eating the same food, all nodding their heads at the same time. Variation is the sign of life. Sameness is the sign of death. — Swami Vivekananda

... oh, you faithless, unfortunate man! ... Because of you I spent the whole night yesterday shivering and naked. I lost my nature and replaced it with a new one, I spent several months sitting in a dark closet thinking about one thing, about the storm over Yershalaim, I cried my eyes out, and now, when happiness has befallen us, you drive me away! Well, then I'll go, I'll go, but you should know that you are a cruel man! They've devastated your soul! — Mikhail Bulgakov

This is the Death's-head Moth," he said. "That's nightshade she's sitting on - we're hoping she'll lay." The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes. "Acherontia styx," Pilcher said. "It's named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time - did I read that?" "Yes," Starling said. "Is it rare?" "In this part of the world it is. There aren't any at all in nature. — Thomas Harris

He was a man who grew up on the fields surrounded by God's creation. He saw how five minutes of rain could spoil five months of hard work, but he also saw how the same five minutes of rain, at a different intensity, could feed the crops for five more days. Sometimes, people, too, had to choose the intensity and speed of living their lives. Sitting in the same spot never changed anything. Movement was the universal law of Nature. — Irina Serban

But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes. — Edith Wharton

At teenage parties he was always wandering into the garden, sitting on a bench in the dark ... staring up at the constellations and pondering all those big questions about the existence of God and the nature of evil and the mystery of death, questions which seemed more important than anything else in the would until a few years passed and some real questions had been dumped into your lap, like how to earn a living, and why people fell in and out of love, and how long you could carry on smoking and then give up without getting lung cancer. — Mark Haddon

Just like I believe God is everywhere, I believe that whether it's nature, whether it's sitting on a bike in spin class, that can be church, too, for me. — Lisa Rinna

In the tide pool I was riveted by fat pink sea stars sitting like satisfied gangsters and seemingly unconcerned by their exposure; gulls would peck at them but the sea stars simply grew replacement limbs. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

The global nature of the religious knowledge of a learned Muslim sitting in Isfahan in the fourteenth century was very different from that of a scholastic thinker in Paris or Bologna of the same period. On the basis of the Quranic doctrine of religious universality and the vast historical experiences of a global nature, Islamic civilization developed a cosmopolitan and worldwide religious perspective unmatched before the modern period in any other religion. This global vision is still part and parcel of the worldview of traditional Muslims, of those who have not abandoned their universal vision as a result of the onslaught of modernism or reactions to this onslaught in the form of what has come to be called fundamentalism. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr