Nature Quotes
The page runs from Shakespeare and Milton through Longfellow, Wordsworth and Thomas Moore, so most of it is poetry from before 1900. Two of the best-sourced lines are in prose. Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605), uses the sun passing through pollutions and remaining as pure as before. Einstein, in an essay for Leo Baeck (1953), says joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.
Three entries are flagged misattributed: a couplet about old Hoghton and pale moonlight credited to William Hazlitt, a remark that kites rise against, not with, the wind, credited to Lewis Mumford, and “You can’t just let nature run wild,” credited to Walt Disney.
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
In science, just as in art and in life, only that which is true to culture is true to nature.
Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative.
Whate’er he did, was done with so much ease,
In him alone 'twas natural to please.
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream.
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.