Hal Borland Quotes about Nature

You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.

You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.

Nature, Squirrels, Earth Day

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.

Hal Borland

Nature, Heart, Autumn

"Sundial of the Seasons". Book by Hal Borland, 1964.

Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.

Hal Borland

Nature, Simple, Sometimes

Hal Borland (1959). “The Enduring Pattern”

You fight dandelions all weekend, and late Monday afternoon there they are, pert as all get out, in full and gorgeous bloom, pretty as can be, thriving as only dandelions can in the face of adversity.

Hal Borland

Weed, Nature, Monday

There are some things, but not too many, toward which the countryman knows he must be properly respectful if he would avoid pain, sickness and injury. Nature is neither punitive nor solicitous, but she has thorns and fangs as wells as bowers and grassy banks.

Hal Borland

Nature, Pain, Thorns

There are no idealists in the plant world and no compassion. The rose and the morning glory know no mercy. Bindweed, the morning glory, will quickly choke its competitors to death, and the fencerow rose will just as quietly crowd out any other plant that tried to share its roothold. Idealism and mercy are human terms and human concepts.

Hal Borland

Morning, Nature, Compassion

The most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent. Save a priceless woodland or an irreplaceable mountain today, and tomorrow it is threatened from another quarter.

Hal Borland

Nature, Environmental, Unhappy