quotations about nature
God made the forests, the tiny stars, and the wild winds--and I think that he made them partly as a balance for that kind of civilization that would choke the spirit of joy out of our hearts. He made the great open places for the people who want to be alone with him and talk to him, away from the crowds that kill all reverence. And I think that he is glad at times to have us forget our cares and responsibilities that we may be nearer him--as Jesus was when he crept away into the wilderness to pray.
MARGARET ELIZABETH SANGSTER
"The Gypsy Spirit"
Nature never breaks her laws.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!
BERTOLT BRECHT
The Exception and the Rule
Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
All things bend to help the man
Who seeks to harmonize
His own free will with nature's plan,
And prove himself most wise.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Destiny"
Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible.
JEROME K. JEROME
"Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad"
Nature admits no lie.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Latter-Day Pamphlets
The inexorable ticking of the clock is like the throb of pain to sensations made keen by sickening fear. And so it is with the great clockwork of nature. Daisies and buttercups give way to the brown waving grasses, tinged with the warm red sorrel; the waving grasses are swept away, and the meadows lie like emeralds set in the bushy hedgerows; the tawny-tipped corn begins to bow with the weight of the full ear; the reapers are bending amongst it, and it soon stands in sheaves; then, presently the patches of yellow stubble lie side by side with streaks of dark-red earth, which the plough is turning up in preparation for the new-thrashed seed. And this passage from beauty to beauty, which to the happy is like the flow of a melody, measures for many a human heart the approach of foreseen anguish--seems hurrying on the moment when the shadow of dread will be followed up by the reality of despair.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
The volume of Nature is the book of knowledge.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Citizen of the World
Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
As an authoress Nature is open to criticism, for her Book hath neither beginning, middle, nor end.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
Nature is a library of divine thoughts to the spiritualized mind.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
It were happy if we studied Nature more in natural things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Mid-summer ... when the alchemy of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Tomb"
There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
The Forsyte Saga
Nature with her wealth of birds and flowers,
Has in her heart a place for every weed;
For her quick eyes require no microscope
To note the varied wonders and delights
That the Creator's humblest works possess.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Nature"
You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.
HORACE
Epistles
Nature is astonishingly prolific, but it is a prodigal process going nowhere special, sponsored by destruction and suffering. What is wonderful and inspiring is the possibility of infinite variation and exquisite adaptation; what is daunting and terrible is the cost. Nature is abundant and unremittingly cruel from, as it were, a personal point of view.
ADAM PHILLIPS
Darwin's Worms On Life Stories and Death Stories
Nature abhors a vacuum.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
All nature is full of God. He is enthroned in Light: he creates darkness: he hath his way in the whirlwind, fendeth abroad his lightnings, giveth snow like wool, scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes, and casteth forth his ice like morsels! Who can stand before his cold? Who can thunder with a voice like God? It is He who distils the rain from his bottles, who opens the bubbling fountains, who covers the fields with grass, and the hills with flocks, who spins out the fleecy air, and spreads forth the liquid plains, who refreshes us with his wings, lights us with the sun, and entertains us with his table, richly furnish'd with all the dainty of heaven.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine