quotations about nature
Munificent nature follows the methods of the divine and true, and rounds all things to her perfect law. While nations are convulsed with blood and violence, how quietly the grass grows.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
ECKHART TOLLE
Stillness Speaks
What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Nature does not make leaps.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain
That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Method of Nature
Nature seems to have neglected no opportunity for ornament. Think of the trees in winter, and the pattern of the twigs against the sky; how the naked branches spread out into the semblance of huge seaweeds in still water. To see them rimed with frost, or after a fresh fall of snow, is a new revelation of their beauty. In spring, when the branches begin to burgeon and to glow with colour, they look more than ever like seaweeds. And individual buds, when you get near enough to distinguish them, have always a character and beauty of their own.
LEWIS FOREMAN DAY
Nature and Ornament
October is Nature's funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life.... Every green thing loves to die in bright colors.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
History of Sexuality
Thus the men whom nature's works can charm, with God himself hold converse; grow familiar, day by day, with his conceptions; act upon his plan; and form to his, the relish of their souls.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
But, even though we are a technological species, we are now out of balance. To thrive, we need more nature and more wild forms of interaction with more wild nature; I doubt we need tons of new technology.
PETER KAHN
"Technology is changing our relationship with nature as we know it", Quartz, August 8, 2017
The world's a scene of changes, and to be
Constant, in Nature were inconstancy.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Inconstancy
Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Revolt of the Angels
Plant seeds and watch them grow. Learn along with the plant. Don't worry if you don't have a green thumb. Nature is so resilient.
KATHRYN KOCARNIK
"Growing young gardeners", Los Angeles Daily News, August 14, 2017
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
From the star-spangled canopy of heaven to the far bottom of the majestic ocean, created earth is teeming with wondrous beauty. There is endless beauty above in the clouds that sweep over the blue ethereal sky; the mountain tops and the valleys below reveal the work of a creating God; the vast plains of the East, and the primeval forests of the West, display the art, power, and glory of an omnipotent architect. The beasts of the field that roam at will o'er created earth, call forth wonder and admiration for Him who gave them life; the birds that soar through the firmament on high strike awe into the breast of frail weak humanity; and the leviathan as it traverses the mighty deep, followed by myriads of fish and fowl, causes him to fear the awful majesty of God. The rivers that roll for thousands of miles down to their mother ocean, the seas that join continent to continent, the lakes that reflect the grandeur of the heavens, the adamantine rocks and cliffs, the hoary majesty of the arctic and antarctic circles, the Eden beauty of the tropics, the wild grandeur of the southern ocean and the storm-tossed northern seas; the vast plains of Africa and Australia, the jungles of Asia and South America, the volcanoes of the old and the new world, the hot springs of the Rocky mountains and the icebergs of the southern seas; the ice-bound coast of Labrador and the fairy islands of the vast Pacific--make man gaze spellbound on the works of the Almighty, and plant in the breast of the youthful savage an instinctive desire to worship the countless orbs of heaven, the everlasting hills of earth, and the glorious beauty of all created nature.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Endless Beauty in Nature", Short Essays
The artist labors while he may,
But finds at best too brief the day;
And, tho' his works outlast the time
And nation that they make sublime,
He feels and sees that Nature knows
Nothing of time in what she does,
But has a leisure infinite
Wherein to do her work aright.
HENRY ABBEY
"Along the Nile"
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Sometimes emit confused words;
There man passes through the forests of symbols
Which observe him with familiar looks.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Correspondences
Nature ... is uniform. There is no sign of accident or caprice, or the arbitrary, fitful interference of a superior power, but the things of nature proceed onward from age to age with a solemn, majestic movement--an august procession that strikes the contemplative beholder with awe, and expands and lifts his soul with indescribable emotions of sublimity and grandeur.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play,
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Empedocles on Etna