Quotes About Nature

I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind.

A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river.

Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass?

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.

Admiration was a sentiment unknown to her - first, as always more or less tainted with mediocrity, and next, as being in a way an admission of inferiority. And both were frankly inconceivable to her nature.

Everything in the world reminded him of her.  The beauty of the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature.  The swelling outlines of the hills, the curves of a coast, the free sinuosities of a river are less suave than the harmonious lines of her body, and when she moves, gliding lightly, the grace of her progress suggests the power of occult forces which rule the fascinating aspects of the visible world.

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

Árboles, árboles, millares de árboles, una inmensidad, alzando sus copas hacia las alturas; y a sus pies, navegando junto a la orilla, contra la corriente, ese vapor herrumbroso, arrastrándose como un escarabajo perezoso por el suelo de un pórtico elevado.

The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist.

To see it thwarted opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, whose morality was artificial, corrupt, and blasphemous.

river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing

And she crawled on, do or die, in the serene weather. The sky was a miracle of purity, a miracle of azure. The sea was polished, was blue was pellucid, was sparkling like a precious stone, extending on all sides , all round to the horizon—as if the whole terrestrial globe had been one jewel, one colossal sapphire, a single gem fashioned into a planet.

brooding over the upper reaches, became

Those striving with unreasonable forces know it well,—the shipwrecked castaways in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling against the unthinking might of nature, or the stupid brutality of crowds.

Allí estaba el río, fascinante y letal como una serpiente.

He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might as of a deity,' and so on, and so on.

There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs.

pero una quietud silenciosa se asentaba a sus riberas.

No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.

He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge.

If you want to know the age of the Earth—look upon the sea in a storm. But what storm can fully reveal the heart of a man? Between Suez and the China Sea are many nameless men who prefer to live and die unknown. This is the story of one such man. Among the great gallery of rogues and heroes thrown up on the beaches and ports—no man was more respected or more damned than—Lord Jim.

The breeze was so faint that it was a smile, not a sigh.

The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around.

as naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.