You may turn nature out of doors with violence, but she will still return.
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.
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.
To the solid ground
Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves
With minute drops from off the eaves.
He made an instrument to know
If the moon shine at full or no.
Come as the winds come, when
Forests are rended,
Come as the waves come, when
Navies are stranded.
The moon looks
On many brooks,
"The brook can see no moon but this."
Night is a stealthy, evil Raven,
Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.
Yet neither spinnes, nor cards, ne cares nor fretts,
But to her mother Nature all her care she letts.
The sun, centre and sire of light,
The keystone of the world-built arch of heaven.
I 'gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
It is the very error of the moon:
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.