Origen (185-254)
"The parallel between nature and Scripture is so complete. We must necessarily believe that the person who is asking questions of nature and the person who is asking questions of Scripture are bound to arrive at the same conclusions."

John of Damascus (675-749)
"The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God."

Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058-1128) Muslim theologian
"Stones, plants, animals the earth, the sky, the stars, the elements in fact everything in the universe reveals to us the knowledge, power and will of its Originator."

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
"Believe on who knows: You will find something greater in woods than in books, Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters."

Rabbi ibn Ezra (1089-1164)
"Wherever I turn my eyes, around on Earth, or to the heavens I see You in the field of stars; I see You in the yield of the land in every breath and sound, a blade of grass, a simple flower, an echo of Your Holy Name."

John Calvin (1509-1564)
"God has ordained the world to be like a theater upon which to behold his goodness."

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)
"The observer of nature sees, with admiration, that the world is full of the glory of God."

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
(1772-1811)
"Grant me the ability to be alone;
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grasses,
among all growing things and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer to talk with the One that I belong to."

Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
"All the facts of the natural world proclaim aloud the one God, Whom man may know, adore and love. Natural history must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe."

John Muir (1838 - 1914) Yosemite Valley (Founder of the Sierra Club)
"I wish you could come here and rest a year. In the simple unmingled love-fountains of God. You would return with fresh truth gathered and absorbed from pines and waterfalls and deep-singing winds, and you would find that they all sang of fountain love, just as did Jesus Christ and all of pure God in whatever form...."

Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"The farther we get away from the land the greater our insecurity."

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
"Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that."

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)
"I am trying to teach you that this alphabet of "natural objects" (soils and rivers, birds and beasts) Spells out a story. Once you learn how to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it, And I know many pleasant things it will do to you."

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
"When your tongue is silent you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, And tells you of its unreality and the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly blazes transparently with the Reality of God."

Pope John Paul II (1921- )
"The visible world is like a map pointing to heaven...We learn to see the Creater by contemplating the beauty of his creatures."

Tony Campolo 1992 (How To Rescue The Earth Without Worshiping Nature)
"...There is no way you can be faithful to Scripture and sensitive to the Holy Spirit without becoming involved in the efforts to rescue the environment..I hope you will be motivated to enter into a new kind of kinship with nature and through this kinship, to worship God in new ways."