Nature C-F
Nature Quotes C-F. For other pages, click the links below
Did I say the book of nature is a catechism? Yes, But, after it answers the first question with “God,” nothing but questions follow.
George W. Cable, (1844-1925) – Madame Delphine, Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, NY, 1896, p 36.
Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) – As quoted in Visions from Earth (2004) by James R. Miller, p. 126
The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) – The Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays, “Philosophical Suicide,” p37, Tr Justin O’Brien, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, NY, 1978
The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man.
Bliss Carman (1861-1929) – New York Times review of Mr. Carman’s Prose; A Volume Of Little Essays By The Canadian Poet. (1903)
I held a blue flower in my hand, probably a wild aster, wondering what its name was, and then thought that human names for natural things are superfluous. Nature herself does not name them. The important thing is to know this flower, look at its color until the blueness becomes as real as a keynote of music. Look at the exquisite yellow flowerettes at the center, become very small with them. Be the flower, be the trees, the blowing grasses. Fly with the birds, jump with a squirrel!
Sally Carrighar (1898-1985) “From Home to the Wilderness,” Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose and Poetry about Nature, Lorraine Anderson, Vintage Books, 2003, p45.
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about — whenever the wind blows —
Louis Carroll –Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – The Sense of Wonder, Harper Collins, (1956)
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – The Sense of Wonder, Harper Collins, (1956)
Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – The Sense of Wonder, Harper Collins, (1956)
Some of nature’s most exquisite handiwork is on a miniature scale, as anyone knows who has applied a magnifying glass to a snowflake.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – The Sense of Wonder, Harper Collins, (1956)
There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – The Sense of Wonder, Harper Collins, (1956)
The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – Silent Spring, Houghton Miffin, 1962
We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – Silent Spring, Houghton Miffin, 1962, p. 277
. . . the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) – Speech accepting the John Burroughs Medal (April 1952)
More and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us.
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) – How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)
I love to think of nature as having unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so.
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) – How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)
Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.
George Washington Carver (1864-1943) – Quoted in George Washington Carver: Agricultural Innovator, Helga Schier, ABDO Publishing, MN, 2008, p. 79
The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) – Remarks on the Character and Writings of Fénelon (1843)
Every year we hear of large numbers of people making trips at the expense of much money and a great deal of time, in order to look upon the far famed dress of Nature . . . And I do not think that this is to be deplored: but, nevertheless, there is no reason why the most of us, who cannot afford such a great outlay, should sit aside and bemoan the fact; for, if ever there was a true saying, it is the statement that all about us, beneath our feet, above our head, on the right hand, on the left – yes, everywhere – are to be found subjects which are as well worth our careful attention as in the loveliest combination of water, hill and dale that the earth can show.
A. C. Chant – Papers read before the Mathematical and physical society of Toronto during the Year 1890-91, Baker, Alfred; Delury, A. T. and Chant, A. C., “The Structure of Matter,” p31, Rowsell & Hutchison, Toronto, Canada, 1891
All nature is a vast symbolism: Every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.
Edwin Hubble (E.H.) Chapin (1814-1880)– Living Words, N.E. Universalist Houes (1866), p. 99.
The dawn of life is like the dawn of day, full of purity, visions and harmonies.
François de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) – René, Translated by A.S.Kline, 2010.
That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.
Lydia M. Child (1802-1880) – Letters from New York, Letter XXXVIII, p276, C.S. Francis & Company, NY, NY 1945
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
Chinese Proverb
Gallery of Nature Quotes
Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art.
Lat., Meliora sunt ea quae natura quam illa quae arte perfecta sunt.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully)(106-43 B.C.) – De Natura Deorum (II, 34)
I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself with implicit obedience to her sacred ordinances.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully) (106-43 B.C.) – Cicero: the Orations, translated by Duncan, the Offices by Cockman, Volume 3, Cato: Or, An Essay on Old Age
Nature has circumscribed the field of life within small dimensions, but has left the field of glory unmeasured.
“Etenim, Quirites, exiguum nobis vitae curriculum natura circum- scripsit, immensum gloriae.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully) (106-43 B.C.) – Pro C. Eabirio perduellionis reo, X., 30.
Law is the highest reason implanted in Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully)(106-43 B.C.) – De legibus, I, vi, 8.
Not in opinion but in nature is law founded.
neque opinione sed natura constitutum esse jus
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully)(106-43 B.C.) – De legibus, I, x, 28
Nature abhors annihilation.
Ab interitu naturam abhorrere.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully)(106-43 B.C.) – De Finibus (V, 11, 3)
Nature herself makes the wise man rich.
Sapientem locupletat ipsa Natura.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully)(106-43 B.C.) – De Finibus (II, 28, 90)
The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Tully)(106-43 B.C.) – Divin. vol. ii, p.72
The gossamer web of life, spun on the loom of sunlight from the breath of an infant Earth, is nature’s crowning achievement on this planet.
Preston E. Cloud (1912-1991) – Oasis in Space, Earth History from the Beginning, W.W. Norton & Co, NY, 1988, p. 42.
Overall, rocks, wood and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its innermost depths.
Thomas Cole (1801-1884) – Essay in American Scenery, American Monthly Magazine, January 1836
. . .nature is still predominant, and there are those who regret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublimity of the wilderness should pass away: for those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the creator–they are his undefiled works, and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.
Thomas Cole (1801-1884) – Essay in American Scenery, American Monthly Magazine, January 1836
And rural nature is full of the same quickening spirit–it is, in fact, the exhaustless mine from which the poet and the painter have brought such wondrous treasures–an unfailing fountain of intellectual enjoyment, where all may drink, and be awakened to a deeper feeling of the works of genius, and a keener perception of the beauty of our existence. For those whose days are all consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolities of fashion, unobservant of nature’s loveliness, are unconscious of the harmony of creation–
Thomas Cole (1801-1884) – Essay in American Scenery, American Monthly Magazine, January 1836
All argument will vanish before one touch of nature.
George Colman (The Younger) – Poor Gentleman (act V, 1)
Your deepest roots are in nature. No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation.
Charles Cook (1945-2018) – Awakening to Nature, Charles Cook, Contemporary Books, 2001, p.VII
Now that we’re essentially an indoor species, walled off from the world of other life forms, we’re divorced from the very domain that supports and sustains our lives.
Charles Cook (1945-2018) – Awakening to Nature, Charles Cook, Contemporary Books, 2001, p.3.
The idea of regularly acknowledging our indebtedness to the natural world and giving thanks for the many gifts we receive from it, or considering other species to be our close “relations” which many indigenous peoples still do, couldn’t be more alien to most of us.
Charles Cook (1945-2018) – Awakening to Nature, Charles Cook, Contemporary Books, 2001, p.5.
There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer.
President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) – The mind of the President: as revealed by himself in his own words. Unknown Binding, 1926, p302.
Nature is but a name for an effect
Whose cause is God.
William Cowper (1731-1800) – The Task (Poem)(1785) Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, l. 223
Nature, exerting an unwearied power,
Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;
Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads
The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.
William Cowper (1731-1800) – Table Talk. Line 690.
(Naiads = Greek Mythology – a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks; meads = meadow)
…Nature—the word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the Universe. Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august, and wonderful, with every barrier that is withdrawn.
Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) – in Practical Mind Reading, William Walker Atkinson, Lesson 1, p9, British association for the Advancement of Science, Bristol, England. 1908
All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
Marie Curie (1867-1934) – Pierre Curie (1923), as translated by Charlotte Kellogg and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, p. 162
All the forces in nature that are the most powerful, are the most quiet.
John Cumming (1807-1881) – The Daily Life, 1855, p 256.
Nature throws her choicest treasures at their feet, but they walk over them disregardful and insensible; while it is true that some even of the commonest productions of the sea productions which are unnoticed from their very abundance would well repay careful study and patient investigation.
William E. Damon – Ocean Wonders: Companion for the Seaside, preface (p.v), D. Appleton & Co, NY, NY, 1879
The more I study Nature, the more I become impressed with ever-increasing force that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations slowly acquired through each part, occasionally varying in a slight degree, but in many ways, with the preservation of those variations which were beneficial to the organism under complex and ever-varying conditions of life, transcend in an incomparable manner the contrivances and adaptations which the most fertile imagination of man could invent.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, Chapter IX (p285), John Murray, London, 1904
Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – Nature. (1911). United Kingdom: Macmillan Journals Limited., Lecture delivered by Prof. Meldola, F.R.S., “Evolution, Darwinian and Spencerian,” Oxford, Dec. 8, 1910.
Nature…cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – Darwin, C. (1891). The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. United Kingdom: John Murray, p. 102
When man gives his whole heart to Nature, and has no cares outside, it is surprising how observant he becomes, and how curious he is to know the cause of things.
William Davies II (1871-1940) – Nature, Ch. I (p. 15), B.T. Batsford, Ltd, London, 1914
Nature is beautiful, and you are in her bosom. That voice of comfort which speaks in the breezes of morning, may visit your mind, that the delightful influences which the green leaves, the blue sky, the moonbeams and clouds of the evening diffuse over the universe, may in their powers of soul-healing, visit your day visions, is my desire and hope.
Sir Humphry Davy (1718-1829) – Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy, Chapter I (p.14), John Churchill, London, 1858
The whole language of nature informs us, that in animated beings there is something above our powers of investigation; something which employs, combines, and arranges the gross elements of matter — a spark of celestial fire, by which life is kindled and preserved, and which, if even the instruments it employs are indestructible in their essence, must itself, of necessity, be immortal.
Sir Humphry Davy (1718-1829) – Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy, ed. John Davy, (Vol 1), Chapter 3, p 218, London, 1836
The true wisdom of the philosopher ought to insist in enjoying everything. Yet we apply ourselves to dissecting and destroying everything that is good in itself, that has virtue, albeit the virtue there is in mere illusions. Nature gives us this life like a toy to a weak child. We want to see how it all works; we break everything. There remains in our hands, and before our eyes, stupid and opened too late, the sterile wreckage, fragments that will not again make a whole. The good is so simple.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) – The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, Tr Walter Pach, Tuesday, June 1, 1824 (p. 92), Covici, NY, NY, 1937
Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) – The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, Tr Walter Pach, Jan. 25, 1857, Covici, NY, NY, 1937
Man’s home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.
John Dewey (1859-1952) – Democracy and Education (1916) Section 21
Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
John Dewey (1859-1952) – Originally published 1934. Art as Experience, ch. 2, Capricorn Books (1958)
Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves.
Annie Dillard (1945- ) – Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Ch 2 p16, Harpers Magazine Press, 1974
Nature is a book of many pages and each page tells a fascinating story to him who learns her language. Our fertile valleys and craggy mountains recite an epic poem of geologic conflicts. The starry sky reveal gigantic suns and space and time without end.
Andrew Ellicott Douglas (1867-1962) – Annual Report of the board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1922, Some Aspects of the Use of the Annual Rings of Trees in Climatic Study, p 223, Government Printing Office, 1924
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
John Dryden (1631–1700) – The Cock and the Fox. Line 452.
The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal.
Rene J. Dubos, (1901-1982), The Wooing of the Earth, 1980.
The peace of nature and of the innocent creatures of God seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its sanctity.
Tomas De Quincey, (1785-1859) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, “Preliminary Confessions” (1821- 56)
… in nature’s book, everything has its place and its time; there exists a persistent interdependency of its creatures one upon another.
And there is never waste.
Allan W. Eckert (1931 – 2011) – Eckert, A. W. (1969). Wild Season. United Kingdom: V. Gollancz., p. 152.
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) – attributed in multiple sources but without citation
We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) – Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31
Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.
Gretel Ehrlich (1946 – ) – Essay “On Water,” in Words from the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing, ed. S. Trimble, Peregrine Smith Books, 1988.
Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – Letter to H. Zangger (10 March 1914), quoted in The Curious History of Relativity by Jean Eisenstaedt (2006), p. 126
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – Quoted in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dec 1981, Vol 37, No 10, p52. A shorter, different version of the quote appears in a letter to Robert S. Marcus, Feb 12, 1960. The quote there states:
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is in the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/einstein-sleuthing/3637 Whether or not Einstein later expanded the passage is unknown.
The wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – 7 August 1941 letter discussing responses to his essay “Science and Religion” (1941)
Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – Response to atheist Alfred Kerr in the winter of 1927 – as quoted in The Diary of a Cosmopolitan (1971) by H. G. Kessler
Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – Letter to Oscar Veblen, April 30, 1930.
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.
Mary Ann Evens, aka George Eliot (1819-1880) – The Mill on the Floss, Book 2, p.464 (1860)
When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Address: The Method of Nature
To the dull mind nature is leaden; To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Journal May 20, 1831 Illumination
Gallery of Nature Quotes
Nature is saturated with Deity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – “The Relation of Intellect to Natural Science,” Deilvered June 8, 1848, in The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871, Vol 1, Ed. Bosco, p. 162
Nature is no spendthrift, but take the shortest way to her ends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – The Conduct of Life; Fate, p 32.
Nature forever puts a premium on reality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – The Conduct of Life; Behavior, p 162.
The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf,—never re-turning one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – The Conduct of Life; Fate, p 12
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Lectures and Biographical Sketches (Education)
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Journals (1822-1863), 25 May 1843
The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essay: “Compensation”
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essays, First Series, “History” 1841
Gallery of Nature Quotes
Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essays and Lectures, “The Conduct of Life,” VII Considerations by the Way, 1860, p.230
Power is in nature the essential measure of right.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essay: Self Reliance
Nature never wears a mean apperance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finnding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume I, Nature, p 9.
Nature is no sentimentalist, — does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – The Conduct of Life: Fate (1860, rev. 1876)
The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing beholding and beholden. The scholar must needs stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him?
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) “An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge,” August 31, 1837, Boston, James Munroe and Company, 1838 , p6.
Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, – but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – “Moral Sense,” in The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871: 1855-1871, ed Bosco & Myerson, 2010.
Gallery of Nature Quotes
Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Nature – Ch. 1.
Old & New put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion & the color of the flake: Antiquity, its form & properties. All things wear a luster which is the gift of the present & a tarnish of time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:286
To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . it beholds every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essay: “Beauty”
As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relations. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign & accidental. I am the heir of uncontained beauty and power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks JMN 5:18-19
I thought as I rode in the cold pleasant light of Sunday morning how silent & passive nature offers, every morn, her wealth to man; she is immensely rich, he is welcome to her entire goods, which he speaks no word, only leaves over doors ajar, hall, store room, & cellar. He may do as he will: if he takes her hint & uses her goods, she speaks no word; if he blunders & starves, she says nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:253
At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essay VI, Nature
[Nature:] How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew!
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Progress of Cuture – Address Read Before The Phi Beta Kappa Society At Cambridge, July 18, 1867.
Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns in fishing, yachting, hunting, or planting, is the manners of Nature; patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water,—patience with the slowness of our feed, with the parsimony of our strenght, with the largeness of sea and land we must traverse, etc.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essay, Farming, in Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Routledge & Sons, London, 1883, p. 239.
Nature is an endless combination of repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Essays, First Series, “History” 1841
It is very odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She is no saint . . .
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841-44, 20 May, 1843, ed Edward Waldo Emerson, p. 405
One’s appreciation of nature is never more acuet than when a bit of nature is injected into one’s flesh.
Howard Ensign Evans (1919-2002) – The Pleasures of Entomology: Portraits of Insects and the People Who Study them, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C., 1985, p. 221
When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature — when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world’s creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) – quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) p. 428
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) – The Character of Physical Law (1965)
To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty of nature . . . . If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) – The Character of Physical Law (1965) Ch. 2.
But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) – The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, 1998.
It turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) – The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, 1998.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) – Rogers Commission Report into the Challenger Crash (June 1986) Appendix F – Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle
All nature wears one universal grin.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) – Tom Thumb the Great, Act I, sc. i, (1730)
The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature.
H.A.L. Fisher (1865-1940) – A History of Europe, Preface (p.v), Edward Arnold Publishers LTD, London, England, 1936
Nature is so varied in its modes of action, so multiple in the manifestations of its power, that we have no night to set any limits to its capabilities.
Camile Flammarion (1842-1925) – Popular Astronomy, Book II, Ch 5, Chatto & Windus, London, England, 1894, p 134.
One of the elementary rules of nature is that, in the absence of a law prohibiting an event or phenomenon, it is bound to occur with some degree of probability. To put it simply and crudely: Anything that can happen does happen.
Kenneth W. Ford (1926- ) – Scientific American, “Magnetic Monopoles,” Vol 209, No. 6, December 1963, p. 122.
Nature is ever making signs to us, she is ever whispering to us the beginnings of her secrets; the scientific man must ever be on the watch, ready at once to lay hold of Nature’s hint, however small, to listen to her whisper, however low.
Sir Michael Foster (1836-1907) – Introduction to Science, Ch 1, Williams & Norgate, London, 1916, p 16.
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
Ann Frank (1929-1945) – The Diary, Period: 12 June 1942 – 1 August 1944), Day:23 Feb 1944).
Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) -“The Great Lawsuit: Man vs Men, Woman vs Women,” The Dial, IV July 1843, 180.
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- David Alan
- Last Updated April 19, 2024