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.
I was heavy with the even,
When she fit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
Nations will go to your light
And kings to your shining splendor.
I didn't believe what I'd been hearing; maybe this wind blowing in just came from the ocean.
Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find
The perfumes thou dost bring?
When the stormy winds do blow;
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
How Strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!
Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view?
Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being,
Was e'er created solely for itself.