Quotes About Nature

The brambles and the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets. Farther along and stronger, bonged the gongs of a throng of frogs, green and vivid on their lily pads. From the sky came the crying of flies, and the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets.

It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. 'I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,' said Lisa.

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me.

There was a mist of moss to ride through and a storm of glass.

She has a memory of trees and fields and nothing more.

I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves." "How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why you human beings don't.

To call such persons humorists, a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature.

The oyster is a blob of glup, but a woman is a woman.

There was a smell, the Golux thought, a little like Forever in the air, but mixed with something faint and less enduring, possibly the fragrance of a flower.

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle...

Eleanor Roosevelt and others said polio changed Roosevelt, that it made him more compassionate. That may be so. But the first impact of the disease was to call forth elements of his nature that no one had seen before - elements that even he may not have known he possessed. His decision to defy polio was a critical moment in his life - perhaps the critical moment.

These observations verify that chimpanzees are a second species—in addition to humans—that deliberately seek out and kill members of their own species. The remarkable violence of humanity is not uniquely ours. The species most closely related to us genetically—chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.4 percent of our DNA—also have a dark side to their nature.

A fight between grasshoppers is a joy to the crow. ~ Lesotho Proverb

Three things cause sorrow to flee; water, green trees, and a beautiful face. ~ Moroccan Proverb

Ah, me! Roll them back, you ruthless harvester of the years. Give back to me Nat-ah'-ki and my youth. Return to us our lodge and the wide, brown, buffalo plains.

Alas! Alas! why could not this simple life have continued? Why must the railroads, and the swarms of settlers have invaded that wonderful land, and robbed its lords of all that made life worth living? They knew not care, nor hunger, nor want of any kind. From my window here I hear the roar of the great city, and see the crowds hurrying by.

Do we conjure up an image of a monster at whom to direct our blame, and take a path which, while psychologically rewarding, is likely to distract from the goal of enacting change in the real world? Or do we take the second path, and look head-on at the true nature of the system, as messy and psychologically indigestible as it seems to be?

In a pine tree, A few yards away from my window sill, A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down, On a branch. I laugh, as I see him abandon himself To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do That the branch will not break.

Across the road, tadpoles are dancing on the quarter thumbnail of the moon. They cant see, not yet.

I have torn myself out of many bitter places In America, that seemed Tall and green-rooted in mid-noon.

Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.

He saw the black water and the declining sun and the swan dipping down, its white wings flashing, and slowing and slowing till silver ripples carried it home. It was a scene which seemed the heart of this land. The lowing sun and the one star waking, white wings on a black water, and the smell of rain, and the long lane fading where a voice comes in the falling night. --Ireland, said Scrotes. --Yes, this is Ireland.

Hush, said a wave. Rush, said its fellow

If you carry the weather with you, then character is determined by the prevailing wind