Nature is goodness crystallized.
Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.
Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.
To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!
I noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we.
Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.
I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men’s beginning to redeem themselves.
For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man, – a denizen of the woods. “The pale white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?
The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.
Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.
We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.