The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.

     Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.  Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or mourning piece.

     In the woods, we return to reason and faith.  There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.

     The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.  I am not alone and unacknowledged.  They nod to me, and I to them.

     ...nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread with melancholy today.

     The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens.

     The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulation of the divine charity nourish man.

     A NOBLER want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.

     To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

     The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.  We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

     Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.  The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.

     To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

     We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it....    “ The winds and waves,” said Gibbon, “are always on the side of the ablest navigators.”  So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven.

     Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

     All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight.  This love of beauty is Taste.  Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms.  The creation of beauty is Art.

     A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind.  What is common to them all,—that perfectness and harmony, is beauty.

     The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point....Thus is Art a nature passed through the alembic of man.

     Nature is the vehicle of thought....Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

     Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.

     All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single sex.  But marry it to human history, and it is full of life.

     As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols....This immediate dependence of language upon nature...never loses its power to affect us.

     We know more from nature than we can at will communicate.  Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence.

     The world is emblematic.   Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

     There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preëxist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affection in the world of spirit.  A fact is the end or last issue of spirit.

     Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths.  Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces.

     ...what good heed Nature forms in us! She pardons no mistakes.  Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

     Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted.

     Nature is thoroughly mediate.  It is made to serve.  It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode.

     Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use.  When a thing has served an end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior service.

     The moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him.

     A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time, is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.  Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world.

     Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference....

     Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature.  They introduce us to the human form, of which all other organizations appear to be degradations.

     To the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature.  In their view man and nature are indissolubly joined....The presence of Reason mars this faith.

     The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts.  The one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon.

     The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both.  Is not the charm of one of Plato’s or Aristotle’s definitions strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature.

     ...religion and ethics...have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit....They both put nature under foot.

     The first and last lesson of religion is, “The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal.”  It puts an affront upon nature.

     The uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects is, —“Contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world: they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities: seek the realities of religion.”  The devotee flouts nature.

     I have no hostility to nature, but a child’s love to it.  I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.  Let us speak her fair.  I do not wish to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest.  I only wish to indicate the true position of nature in regard to man....

     The aspect of nature is devout.  Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast.  The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

      ...the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.  It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it.

     Behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one, and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it  forth through us....

     The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man....As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident.  We are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from God.

     ...the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth....will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments.

     When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.

      In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldly and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.

     At present, man applies to nature but half his force.  He works on the world with his understanding alone.

     The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul....The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself.  He cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit.