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.
There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.
The longest way must have its close,—the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.
The rulers of the earth are sowing a fearful wind, to reap a most terrible whirlwind.