quotations about nature
All Nature wears one universal grin.
HENRY FIELDING
Tom Thumb the Great
Beyond the wall of the unreal city ... there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.
JOHN UPDIKE
The Centaur
A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two elements, a knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalists will be well aware how widely the two may be separated. He will have seen that a man may study butterflies and forget that they are beautiful, or be perfect in the "Lunar theory" without knowing what most people mean by the moon.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Math and nature, as different as they may seem, walk hand in hand with each other. Math is the bare bones theory, and nature is that theory showcased in full color.
CATHERINE GARNER
"Nature is math in living color", Union Daily Times, August 3, 2017
Nature doesn't speak for you afterward, if you haven't had your say in the world. But nature, if you place your faith in it, dilutes that compulsion and other vanities. The wiggling gleam of flowing water, the romantic disk of the moon, the soothing enigma of starlight, the sight of wind-blown grass, whirling leaves, and large-crowned trees, the smell of woods soil, the extraordinary comfort, both emotional and physical, delivered by the sun, are free.
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Tigers & Ice
Great is thy voice, O, Nature; in one note thou hast endless tones, each a color in harmony with the whole!
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
The wisest man is the man who is most in sympathy with nature; who follows most closely in her footsteps; yields most readily to her intimations; catches quickest her whispers; sets up least his own will, or prejudices, or notions, against her instructions.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold
By viewing nature, nature's handmaid art,
Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow:
Thus fishes first to shipping did impart,
Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.
JOHN DRYDEN
Annus Mirabilis
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.
OSCAR WILDE
De Profundis
All nature is the temple; earth the altar.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because,
Unto my seeming, there doth lurk
A lawlessness about her laws,
More mood than purpose in her work.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Nature and the Book", At the Gate of the Convent and Other Poems
Somehow we instinctively know that our own nature is revived when we expose it to real nature, and real nature, by definition, is wild.
RICK BROUSSARD
"Health and Wildness", New Hampshire Magazine, August 14, 2017
All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world--not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Beauties of Nature
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature and Selected Essays
Nature is simply what is and has nothing to do with what ought to be.
JULIAN BAGGINI
"Nature is not evil, simply amoral", The Independent, March 14, 2011
Even minor tampering with nature is apt to bring serious consequences, as did the introduction of a single chemical (DDT). Genetic engineering is tampering on a monumental scale, and nature will surely exact a heavy toll for this trespass.
EVA NOVOTNY
attributed, Environmental Biotechnology: A Biosystems Approach
Man is Nature's sole mistake.
W. S. GILBERT
Princess Ida
We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may "conquer" them.
C. S. LEWIS
The Abolition of Man