Quotes About Nature

Come I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that is not just as wonderful, And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.

Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature, They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass, And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars...

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do. Me imperturbe

We carry our fresh air with us, wherever we go. He who has it, has it anywhere—nothing can rob him of it. I find in all characters that live close to nature, capriciousness, variability—they seem to pattern after nature's higher rules. The children are that way, and dogs, cats—not but that their perceptions, intuitions, are keen enough, but with the capricious, too.

Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached

they may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

In the swamp, in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary, the thrush, The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song.

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

I believe in all that—in baseball, in picnics, in freedom.

It is with America as it is with nature: I believe our institutions can digest, absorb, all elements, good and bad, godlike or devilish, that come along: it seems impossible for nature to fail to make good in the processes peculiar to her: in the same way it is impossible for America to fail to turn the worst luck into best--curses into blessings.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost... ...Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires, The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;

the old name absorbs into me—MANNAHATTA, the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.

How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions.

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a fire and broiling the freshkilled game, Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by my side.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Here by myself away from the clank of the world,   Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic

I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize

In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death

Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (Leaves of Grass preface)