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 light in the world comes principally from two sources,—the sun, and the student's lamp.
Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; do thou but thine.
A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
Take a straw and throw it up into the air — you may see by that which way the wind is.
There are two kinds of light — the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
An unreflected light did never yet
Dazzle the vision feminine.
Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.
Every operation in nature is in the shortest, best ordered, briefest, and best possible way.
Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom.
Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.
A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.
Why are the heavens not filled with light? Why is the universe plunged into darkness?
To all, to each, a fair good-night,
And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light!