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.
When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,
But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.
Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks.
The selfsame sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike.
We should not limit our gaze to the finger that points us to the moon.
The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle
That's curded by the frost from purest snow.
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
What wind blew you hither, Pistol?
Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.