#nature
101 quotes
“I say the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion. Starting from Paumanok. 7”
“I will write the evangel”
“If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere”
“Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!”
“I find I'm a good deal more of a socialist than I thought I was: maybe not technically, politically, so, but intrinsically, in my meanings. Conversation with Whitman (July 16 1888) as quoted in With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906) by Horace Traubel, Vol. II”
“There was a kind of labor agitator here today”
“Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated.”
“The Spanish Element in Our Nationality,”
“Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War”
“I have just this moment heard from the front”
“There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. Mowing”
“The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. Mowing”
“I do not see why I should e'er turn back , Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew”
“Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow, But it were vain to tell her so, And they are better for her praise. My November Guest”
“The desolate, deserted trees, The faded earth, the heavy sky, The beauties she so truly sees, She thinks I have no eye for these, And vexes me for reason why. My November Guest”
“Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She's glad the birds are gone away, She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist. My November Guest”
“My Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane. My November Guest”
“A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching”
“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense. Letter to Louis Untermeyer”
“It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching. Letter to Sidney Cox”
“In our modern world nothing may be taken for granted”
“To many of us, this sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of the color and beauty and interest of bird life, is sufficient cause for sharp regret. To those who have never known such rewarding enjoyment of nature, there should yet remain a nagging and insistent question: If this "rain of death" has produced so disastrous an effect on birds, what of other lives, including our own? Washington Post, April 10, 1959”
“Essay on the Biological Sciences”
“Help your child to wonder”
“Writing is a lonely occupation at best. Of course there are stimulating and even happy associations with friends and colleagues, but during the actual work of creation the writer cuts himself off from all others and confronts his subject alone. He moves into a realm where he has never been before”
“The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth”
“We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man; it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow. Speech accepting the John Burroughs Medal (April 1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 96”
“Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. There is certainly no single remedy for this condition and I am offering no panacea. But it seems reasonable to believe”
“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities. If they are not there, science cannot create them. If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry. Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91”
“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science. Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952) for The Sea Around Us ; also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91”
“I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence. The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)”
“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the oppressed. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Ch. 15”
“The mountains are the heart of a country. Travels with Charley (1962)”
“No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a New England town. Travels with Charley (1962)”
“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)”
“Man itself is as mixed as the clouds, as disharmonious as the sea. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Ch. 15”
“A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ. Travels with Charley (1962)”
“Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other. Of Mice and Men (1937), Ch. 1”
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Of Mice and Men (1937), title reference to Robert Burns”
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. Travels with Charley (1962)”
“Slavery in Massachusetts”
“Talk of mysteries!”
“When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson”
“Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, If juster battles are enacted now Between the ants upon this hummock's crown? "The Summer Rain", st. 3. The Dial (October 1842) p. 224”
“My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. "The Summer Rain", st. 1. The Dial (October 1842) p. 224”
“The life that I aspire to live No man proposeth me”
“Great God , I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye. "Prayer", st. 1. The Dial (July 1842) p. 79”
“Natural History of Massachusetts”
“But now I see I was not plucked for naught, And after in life's vase Of glass set while I might survive, But by a kind hand brought Alive To a strange place. "Sic Vita", st. 6. The Dial (July 1841) p. 82”
“I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather. "Sic Vita", st. 1. The Dial (July 1841) p. 81”
“School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to be at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself.. .I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way things that I had no words for. 'Foreword' of the catalogue for the show at the Anderson Galleries in New York, 1926”
“I thought you could write something about me that men can't”
“I have been thinking of what you say about form.. .I feel that a real living form is the natural result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown.. ..and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown known. By unknown I mean the thing that means so much to the person that he want to put it down”
“As I opened the door”
“The plains are very wonderful now”
“Walked way out in the plains in the moonlight”
“Your letter became before I was up this morning”
“Last night I couldn't sleep till after four in the morning”
“Today I walked into the sunset”
“Anita, I have just come the comforting conclusion that I'll have to paint acres and acres of water color landscapes before I will look for even a passably fair one. After about ten attempts”
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes”
“A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King. A little Madness in the Spring”
“By the Book: Julia Alvarez”
“We turn not older with years, but newer every day. Letter to Louise Norcross (late 1872); Letters (1958) p. 499, no. 379”
“To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations. Letter to T. W. Higginson (late 1872); Letters (1958) p. 380, no. 381”
“If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? Letter to T. W. Higginson (1870); Letters (1958) p. 474, no. 342a”
“I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur”
“My friends are my "estate." Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them. Letter to Samuel Bowles (August 1858 or 1859); Thomas H. Johnson (ed.) The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958) p. 338, no. 193”
“Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus passed the house”
“God is sitting here, looking into my very soul to see if I think right thoughts . Yet I am not afraid, for I try to be right and good; and He knows every one of my struggles. Letter to Abiah Root (29 January 1850); Mabel Loomis Todd (ed.) Letters of Emily Dickinson , vol. 1 (Boston: Roberts Bros, 1894) p. 39 [1] [2]”
“In nature, we find the fingerprints of the creator.”
“Classification is the foundation of all science.”
“The study of nature is the study of God's works.”
“Every species is a thought of God.”
“The order of nature is the order of God.”
“I thank God that I have seen the world for what it is.”
“The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves.”
“To live by medicine is to live horribly.”
“Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds.”
“If a tree dies, plant another in its place.”
“We may assume that plants have arisen within the orders, i.e. by genera of one order, may mix with each other. In this was there will arise species that should be referred to the mother's genus as her daughters.”
“That by their various mixings different plants have arisen which belong to the mother's natural order as they are similar to the mother with regard to their fructifications, and are, as it were, species of the order, i.e., genera.”
“That in the beginning the Creator created of each natural Order only one plant with reproductive power.”
“The principle being accepted that all Species of one Genus have arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be assumed”
“We say there are as many genera as there are similarly constituted fructifications of different natural species. Fundamenta Botanica (1736). Original in Latin: Genera tot dicimus, quot similes constructae fructifications proserunt diversae Species naturales”
“the whole world is full of the glory of God.”
“If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes . Philosophia Botanica (1751), aphorism 210. Trans. Frans A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735”
“Nature does not make any leaps. All plants show an affinity with those around them, according to their geographical location. Philosophia Botanica”
“I thank Providence who has guided my destinies, that I now live ; nay, that I live happier than a king of Persia. You know, fathers and fellow”
“Linnaeus and homo religiosus,”
“The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I would like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead."”
“From the remotest nebulæ and from the revolving double stars, we have descended to the minutest organisms of animal creation, whether manifested in the depths of ocean or on the surface of our globe, and to the delicate vegetable germs which clothe the naked declivity of the ice”
“While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more enobled by mental cultivation than others, but none in themselves nobler than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom; a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs only to the individual, but which, in social states enjoying political institutions, appertains as a right to the whole body of the community.”
“The principal impulse by which I was directed was the earnest endeavor to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces. My intercourse with highly”
“In order to ameliorate without commotion new institutions must be made, as it were, to rise out of those which the barbarism of centuries has consecrated. It will one day seem incredible that until the year 1826 there existed no law in the Great Antilles to prevent the sale of young infants and their separation from their parents, or to prohibit the degrading custom of marking the negroes with a hot iron, merely to enable these human cattle to be more easily recognized.”
“Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.”
“The expression of vanity and self”
“One of the noblest characteristics which distinguish modern civilization from that of remoter times is, that it has enlarged the mass of our conceptions, rendered us more capable of perceiving the connection between the physical and intellectual world, and thrown a more general interest over objects which heretofore occupied only a few scientific men, because those objects were contemplated separately, and from a narrower point of view.”
“Devoted from my earliest youth to the study of nature, feeling with enthusiasm the wild beauties of a country guarded by mountains and shaded by ancient forests, I experienced in my travels, enjoyments which have amply compensated for the privations inseparable from a laborious and often agitated life.”
“the restless activity of large communities of men gradually despoil the face of the Earth”
“Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us. As quoted in Seed”