Quotes About Nature

All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman... Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural.

The union of two natures for a time is so great

Hope is a straw hat hanging beside a window covered with frost.

Mirabelle loved the forest. It was cool and full of shadows and little shifting pools of sunlight. It was strange and secret, full of unknown things, magic things perhaps. It sheltered flocks of colored birds, and rabbits and squirrels and the big-eyed, delicate-footed deer. It breathed with the scent of flowers and the sound of running water, and at night it held all the stars in its branches.

Yes, it's true that Cranmer had the courage of a scholar. And Mary a warm heart. And Pole integrity. All good people by nature. Yet look at the Devil's brew they've broiled between them. No one can be everything.

Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.

Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences. We have only ourselves to blame.

But see, in our open clearings, how golden the melons lie; Enrich them with sweets and spices, and give us the pumpkin-pie!

We think there is *one* planet called Earth, but there are thousands, even *millions*, like a snake shedding its skin every so often, but with all the old skins still bunched around it. You live inside the creature for quite a while, so it comes as a shock to find you're living now in one of the husked-off skins, and sometimes you can touch and know about the creature as it is now and sometimes you can't.

The lilacs grew with no care given them, and in the early summer they hung like bunches of mild mauve grapes from branches with leaves like dark green hearts, and the scent of them was so bold and sweet you could smell nothing else, a seasonal mercy.

The river flowed both ways.

The shop for fuller figures could be seen through broad, green leaves, its windows full, not of dresses, but fat zeros, pot-bellied legless sixes and bosomy eights, and threes like pregnant, primitive goddesses. In the teashop the chairs were being stood on top of the tables and made a forest of their own, sprouting upwards in fountains of coloured leaves.

and after all, if I really wanted the bay to stay totally untouched, I wouldn't be living here myself, would I?" said her mother's voice out in the kitchen. I'd live in the city, and just enjoy the idea of the bay, pure and untouched between bare hills. But we built this house didn't we? We dug into the slope and levelled the space and poured the concrete foundations.

We were like two wolves that have chased a prey and lost it: They lie together in the dark woods, panting and weary, and they're still hungry.

Pesci, non siamo altro che pesci... branchie che si gonfiano e si chiudono... poi viene un gabbiano che dall'alto ci prende e mentre ci smembra ci fa volare, forse questo è l'amore.

Alone all day, Juniper would remember the animals and places he loved, and hold them in his own heart before the great Heart that made them. He was learning to find quietness inside himself. He was learning to pray.

Urchin decided to put off his carefully prepared speech until they were on the shore. They sat on the rocks at low tide as they had so often before, watching anemones and sea urchins while Sepia dabbled her paws in the water. Finally he decided that his speech was ridiculous, and simply asked her to marry him.

Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.

Rosebuds might be sweet, but one need never be so careful of the rose in full bloom.

The Incarnation of Christ raised the energy of everything. And when Hopkins placed his conviction of this into poetry, he tended to mention electricity, lightening, fire, flash, flame. He wrote in his late, great poem, "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the comfort of the Resurrection": 'In a flash, at a trumpet crash, / I am all at once what Christ is, / since he was what I am and / This jack, joke, poor potsherd, / patch matchwood, immortal diamond, / Is immortal diamond.

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. -A

She had chained herself to her place in society and the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only chains thus strong could have bound her lot as a brood animal for the masculine civilizations of the world.