Quotes About Nature

Go out of the house to see the moon, and' t is mere tinsel; {it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem.

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition

Tis not in the high stars alone, Nor in the cup of budding flowers, Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things There alway, alway something sings.

As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation.

facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for

Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift The warm rosebuds below.

Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse

Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself.

Over everything stands its daemon or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody.

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and [in spite of] all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me.

Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. This native determination guides his labor and his spending. He wants an equipment of means and tools proper to his talent. And to save on this point were to neutralize the special strength and helpfulness of each mind. Do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and not its acceptableness.

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for Being; Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

Jesus spoke of miracles because he saw all of life as miraculous. Miracles appear to us as the eyes of our hearts are opened, and we see clearly. But, as defined by the churches, a miracle is a monstrosity—something contrary to nature, rather than in harmony with it.  Jesus respected Moses and the Hebrew prophets, but didn't limit himself to repeating their insights. He spoke from the heart, not from a book, and brought forth a new revelation: the divinity of the soul.

And evermore in the world is this marvellous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.

The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens.

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind.

Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the sweet, without the other side,—the bitter.

WHOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline. Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not

INTRODUCTION. OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we

The universe is an amazing puzzle, I thought as I looked upon this dizzying series of forms—radiant crystals, shining metals, gauzy butterflies, sea shells that seemed carved by a master artisan, the birds, beasts, insects, snakes, fish. All things are united by the same life force. Even rocks are formed from the same elements, sharing a kinship with plants and animals. These diverse expressions of nature seem so different at first glance, yet ultimately they are all connected.