Quotes About Nature

spitting a stinging rain

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

I believe that all children should be surrounded by books and animals.

The gold and scarlet leaves that littered the countryside in great drifts whispered and chuckled among themselves, or took experimental runs from place to place, rolling like coloured hoops among the trees. It was as if they were practising something, preparing for something, and they would discuss it excitedly in rustly voices as they crowded round the tree trunks.

The owls appeared now, drifting from tree to tree as silently as flakes of soot, hooting in astonishment as the moon rose higher and higher, turning to pink, then gold, and finally riding in a nest of stars, like a silver bubble.

Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close.

Life is water dancing to the tune of solids." Without that dance, there could be no life.

We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we do not understand the beast within ourselves.

Almond Blossom. if you don't look closely at the rings of the branches, it could be by anyone. well, anyone who was among the greatest painters of the century: matisse, perhaps. anyone who had studied prints from the japanese. anyone who loved light, and living things. anyone who believed in the rebirth of nature, the seasons of existence, the blossoming of the creative.

And her laughter was like the wind, the water, and a thousand songbirds singing together.

A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old work horse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose into the open.

The claim in Psalms that "the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His works" (Psalms 19:2) is not a mere metaphor. The study of nature, even with all its intellectual rigor, is filled with spiritual wonder.

But the Bible is anything but superficial. The Bible is not an easy read, and nature is not a simple study.

I had come to think that the Wampanoag, who dealt so kindly with their babes, were wiser than we in this. What profit was there in requiring little ones to behave like adults? Why bridle their spirits and struggle to break their God-given nature before they had the least understanding of what was wanted of them?

At sunset, if I am near the water - and it is hard to be very far from it here -I pause to watch the splendid disc set the brine aflame and then douse itself in it's own fiery broth.

He walked through the woods like a young Adam, naming creation.

I lifted the latch, and there he stood, dark and tall, the scholar's gown falling from his shoulders like the cloak of the Black Knight in the old tale. His arms were laden with boughs of apple blossom. He lifted a branch, high over my head, and shook it, so that the petals showered me, releasing a heady scent that promised spring.

For if we could be allowed to see the Plague as a thing in Nature merely, we did not have to trouble about some grand celestial design that had to be completed before the disease would abate. We could simply work upon it as a farmer might toil to rid his field of unwanted tare, knowing that when we found the tools and the method and the resolve, we would free ourselves, no matter if we were a village full of sinners or a host of saints.

Agesilaus, the Spartan king, was once invited to hear a mimic imitate the nightingale, but declined with the comment that he had heard the nightingale itself.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Brutes leave ingratitude to man.

Unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct ... hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and parts of premisses.

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.