I'm what I seem; not any dyer gave,
But nature dyed this colour that I have.
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.
Into this wild abyss,
The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.
Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions.
Pompey bade Sylla recollect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun.
I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.
Suppose the chariot of the sun were given you, what would you do? (Apollo's question to Phaeton)