Nature M-S

When men have recognized that the forest is a great standing army, divinely appointed to protect the human race not only from drought, flood, and famine, but from their counterparts in the intellectual and spiritual world, perhaps some of the time and money now spent on battleships and destructive armies will be diverted to the maintenance of our beautiful and peaceful defenders, the trees.
Ellen Burns Sherman (1867-1956) – On the Manuscripts of God, Abingdon Press, NY, 1918, pp, 96-97,

If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can’t help but learn.
Bernie Siegel M.D (1932 -) “Love: The WORK of the SOUL,” in Handbook for the Soul, Carson and Shield, Hatchett Book Group, 1995, Chapter 2.

Neither Miró nor Picasso. Signed by nature.
Sergio da Silva (1955 – ) – Water, Mirror of the World, United Nations Publications, 2006. p164.

Nature sometimes contrives to disconcert by reflecting the image of our creation.
Sergio da Silva (1955 – ) – Water, Mirror of the World, United Nations Publications, 2006, p148.

Throughout intimate association with the living things around us; we reach out beyond the narrow human sphere into the larger natural world that surrounds and sustains us.
Alexander Frank Skutch (1904-2004) – Nature through Tropical Windows, University of California Press, 1983, Preface, xiii.

If we look for its fiercer aspects, we have no difficulty convincing ourselves that nature is “red in tooth and claw.” Many of us, however prefer to contemplate its gentler side, its constructive activities, and thee peace, cooperativeness, and altruism we find there. This is what attracts us to nature, while the harsher side repels.
Alexander Frank Skutch (1904-2004) – Nature through Tropical Windows, University of California Press, 1983, p173

One of the most delightful spectacles that nature affords is a tropical tree profusely laden with fruits that brightly colored birds are eating in the sunshine.
Alexander Frank Skutch (1904-2004) – Nature through Tropical Windows, University of California Press, 1983, p173

Imitate Nature? Yes, when we cannot improve upon her. Admire Nature? Possibly, but be not blinded to her defects. Learn from Nature? We should sit humbly at her feet until we can stand erect and go our own way. Love Nature? Never! She is our treacherous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched and circumvented, for at any moment and in spite of all our vigilance she may wipe out the human race by famine, pestilence or earthquake and within a few centuries obliterate every trace of its achievement.
Edwin Emery Slossin (1865-1919) – Creative Chemistry, Chapter 1, The Century Co., NY, 1919, p. 10.

Civilized man, enthroned in his citadel and defended by all the forces of nature that he has brought under his control, is after all in the same situation as a savage, shivering in the darkness beside his fire, listening to the pad of predatory feet, the rustle of serpents and the cry of birds of prey, knowing that only the fire keeps his enemies off, but knowing too that every stick he lays on the fire lessons his fuel supply and hastens the inevitable time when the beasts of the jungle will make their fatal rush.
Edwin Emery Slossin (1865-1919) – Creative Chemistry, Chapter 1, The Century Co., NY, 1919, p. 11.

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.
Gary Snyder (1930 – ) – The Practice of the Wild, “The Etiquette of Freedom,” Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, 1990, p 7.

Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complicated kind of order.
Gary Snyder (1930 – ) – The Practice of the Wild, “Good, Wild, Sacred,” Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, 1990, p 100.

…Nature has set no end before herself, and that all final causes are nothing but human fictions.
Baruch de Spinoza  (1632-1677) – de Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, Appendix, Hafner Press, 1949, p74.

In Nature all is common, and no use is base. She keeps no selected elements done up in gilt papers for sensitive people.
Joel Dorman Steele (1836-1886) – A Fourteen Weeks Course in Chemistry,  A.S.Barnes & Co., NY, NY, 1870 Conclusion (p223),

We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and I will say the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate and half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — and half free in a liberation of resources undreamed-of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.
Adlai Stevenson II  (1900-1965) – Speech to the UN Economic and Social Council, Geneva, Switzerland (9 July 1965)

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
Adlai Stevenson II (1900-1965) – Radio address, September 29, 1952

But indeed, it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – Essays of Travel and in the Art of Writing, Scribner’s, NY, (1921), Forest Notes, p191.

The seeming significance of nature’s appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, Character and Opinions (p. 134) Scribner’s Sons, NY, NY, 1902

Nature is man’s teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to his search,
unseals his eye, illumes his mind,
and purifies his heart;
an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds
of her existence.
Alfred Billings Street (1811-1881) – Drawings and Tintings, NY, 1844, p4.

There is no boon in nature. All the blessings we enjoy are the fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study.
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) – “There is no Boon in Nature,” Earth Hunger and Other Essays, Yale Univ. Press,1912, p.238