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;void(0)) NATURE . . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: ADIRONDACKS AUTUMN BEAUTY CLOUDS COLD CONSERVATION COUNTRY LIFE EARTH ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTALISTS FALL FLOWERS FOG FOREST GARDENS GEOGRAPHY GRAND CANYON HEAT HURRICANES INSECTS LAKE GEORGE LITTERING MOUNTAINS NEW ENGLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE OCEANS OUTDOORS PLANTS POLLUTION PRAIRIE RAIN RIVERS SAND SEA (THE), SEASONS SKY SNOW SPRING TREES WASTE WEATHER WINTER WOODS (THE) YORKSHIRE, YOSEMITE Our poets ... spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial. --Edward Abbey (19271989) American author. _A Voice Crying in the Wilderness_ (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) [1989] ch. 5, "On Writing and Writers, Books and Art" All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all. --Cecil Frances Alexander (18181895) English hymnwriter. "All Things Bright and Beautiful" [1848], st. 1 Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats. --Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (b. 1935) American actor, screenwriter, and director. "On Seeing a Tree in Summer" (essay) Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Novum Organum_ [1620], aphorism 129 - "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher and farmer. When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. - When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it. --William Blake (17571827) English poet. "Laughing Song" in _Songs of Innocence_ [1789]. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity ... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. --William Blake (17571827) English poet. Letter to the Rev. Dr. Trusler [23 August 1799]. - To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest, or over a wildflower in spring these are some of the rewards of the simple life. --John Burroughs (18371921) American naturalist and writer. "An Outlook upon Life", III in _The Writings of John Burroughs_, Vol. 15 "Leaf and Tendril" [1908]. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not man the less, but Nature more. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (17881824) English Romantic poet and satirist. "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" [1818], canto IV, st. 178 A haze on the far horizon, The infinite, tender sky, The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, And the wild geese sailing high; And all over upland and lowland The charm of the golden-rod, Some of us call it Autumn, And others call it God. --William Herbert Carruth (18591924) American educator and author. "Each in His Own Tongue," in _Poems_ [1908]. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. --Rachel Carson (19071964) American marine biologist and author. _The Sense of Wonder_ [1956] Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, and the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. --Anton Chekhov (18601904) Russian dramatist and short-story writer. _Uncle Vanya_ [1897] Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art. [Latin: Meliora sunt ea quae natura quam illa quae arte perfecta sunt.] --Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 BC) Roman orator and statesman. "De Natura Deorum" (On the Nature of the Gods) [45 B.C.] ^^ Yellowstone Park, he explained, was the first wilderness to be set aside as a natural preserve anywhere in the world. The region around the Yellowstone River in Wyoming had long been recognized for its wondrous scenic beauty. Lewis and Clark sang its praises. Artists like Bierstadt and Moran painted it. And the new Northern Pacific Railroad wanted a scenic attraction to draw tourists west. So in 1872, in part because of railroad pressure, President Ulysses Grant set aside two million acres and created Yellowstone National Park. There was only one problem, unacknowledged then and later. No one had any experience trying to preserve wilderness. There had never been any need to do it before. And it was assumed to be much easier than it proved to be. When Theodore Roosevelt visited the park in 1903, he saw a landscape teeming with game. There were thousands of elk, buffalo, black bear, deer, mountain lions, grizzlies, coyotes, wolves, and bighorn sheep. By that time there were rules in place to keep things as they were. Soon after that, the Park Service was formed, a new bureaucracy whose sole job was to maintain the park in its original condition. Yet within ten years, the teeming landscape that Roosevelt saw was gone forever. And the reason for this was the park managers - charged with keeping the park in pristine condition - had taken a series of steps that they thought were in the best interest of preserving the park and its animals. But they were wrong. "Well," Bradley said, "our knowledge has increased with time ... " "No, it hasn't," Kenner said. "That's my point. It's a perpetual claim that we know more today, and it's not borne out by what actually happened." Which was this: the early park managers mistakenly believed that elk were about to become extinct. So they tried to increase the elk herds within the park by eliminating predators. To that end, they shot and poisoned all the wolves in the park. And they prohibited Indians from hunting in the park, though Yellowstone was a traditional hunting ground. Protected, the elk herds exploded, and ate so much of certain trees and grasses that the ecology of the area began to change. The elk ate the trees that the beavers used to make dams, so the beavers vanished. That was when the managers discovered beavers were vital to the overall water management of the region. When the beavers disappeared, the meadows dried up; the trout and otter vanished; soil erosion increased; and the park ecology changed even further. By the 1920s it had become abundantly clear there were too many elk, so the rangers began to shoot them by the thousands. But the change in plant ecology seemed to be permanent; the old mix of trees and grasses did not return. It also became increasingly clear that the Indian hunters of old had exerted a valuable ecological influence on the park lands by keeping down the numbers of elk, moose, and bison. This belated recognition came as part of a more general understanding that native Americans had strongly shaped the "untouched wilderness" that the first white men saw - or thought they were seeing - when they first arrived in the New World. The "untouched wilderness" was nothing of the sort. Human beings on the North American continent had exerted a huge influence on the environment for thousands of years - burning plains grasses, modifying forests, thinning specific animal populations, and hunting others to extinction. In retrospect, the rule forbidding Indians from hunting was seen as a mistake. But it was just one of many mistakes that continued to be made in an unbroken stream by park managers. Grizzlies were protected, then killed off. Wolves were killed off, then brought back. Animal research involving field study and radio collars was halted, then resumed after certain species were declared endangered. A policy of fire prevention was instituted, with no understanding of the regenerative effects of fire. When the policy was finally reversed, thousands of acres burned so hotly that the ground was sterilized, and the forests did not growback without reseeding. Rainbow trout were introduced in the 1970s, soon killing off the native cutthroat species. And on and on. And on. "So what you have," Kenner said, "is a history of ignorant, incompetent, and disastrously intrusive intervention, followed by attempts to repair the intervention, followed by attempts to repair the damage caused by the repairs, as dramatic as any oil spill or toxic dump. Except in this case there is no evil corporation or fossil fuel economy to blame. This disaster was caused by environmentalists charged with protecting the wilderness, who made one dreadful mistake after another - and, along the way, proved how little they understood the environment they intended to protect." --dialogue in Michael Crichton (19422008) American author, _State Of Fear_ [2004] ^^ We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways. --Clarence Day (18741935) American author. _This Simian World_, VIII [1920] Long Island represents the American's idea of what God would have done with Nature if he'd had the money. --Peter Fleming (19071971) English travel writer. Letter to Rupert Fleming [29 September 1929]. The trail has taught me much. I know now the varied voices of the coyote the wizard of the mesa. I know the solemn call of herons and the mocking cry of the loon. I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffon sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me I am happy. --Hamlin Garland (18601940) American author and winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for literature. "Hitting the Trail" published in _McClure's_ (mag.) [February 1899]. ^ Samuel Goldwyn (18821974) American film producer. Goldwyn was not given to flights of (uncalculated) sentiment. He and some colleagues, visiting him at his home, were once engaged in a bitter dispute over a script. One of them walked over to the window looking out on Goldwyn's luxurious lawn. He stood there for a moment, then called out to the others, 'Come look. Here we are fighting, and this marvelous, peaceful event is taking place in nature right under our noses. We should be ashamed of ourselves.' The others, Goldwyn last, trooped over. Parading across the lawn were a mother quail and her five little chicks. They stood there for a short time; then the silence was broken by the unappeasable Goldwyn: 'They don't belong here.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ Sympathy with nature is part of the good man's religion. --attributed to Frederick Henry Hedge (18051890) American Unitarian minister. A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city. --P.D. [Phyllis Dorothy] James (b. 1920) English writer of detective stories. _Devices and Desires_, ch. 8 [1989] In Louisiana, the live-oak is the king of the forest, and the magnolia is its queen; and there is nothing more delightful to one who is fond of the country than to sit under them on a clear, calm spring morning like this. --Joseph Jefferson (18291905) American actor. _The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson_ [1917 ed.] Lake George is, without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw; formed by a contour of mountains into a basin thirty-five miles long, and from two to four miles broad, finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal and the mountain sides covered with rich groves of silver fir, white pine, aspen and paper birch down to the wateredge, here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony. An abundance of speckled trout, salmon trout, bass, and other fish with which it is stored, have added to our other amusements, the sport of taking them. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. Letter to Martha Jefferson Randolph [31 May 1791]. I strove with none; for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art. --Walter Savage Landor (17751864) English poet, essayist, and critic. "Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher" l. I [1853] To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel. This state of affairs is at least partially due to the fact that nature and I have so little in common. We don't go to the same restaurants, laugh at the same jokes or, most significant, see the same people. --Fran Lebowitz (b. 1946) American humorist. _Social Studies_ [1981] ^ Li Po (701762) Chinese poet. A lover of beauty and wine, Li Bo met his death appropriately. According to popular tradition, he was out in a boat one evening. Trying to embrace the reflection of the moon, which shone full on the water, he fell in and drowned. --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ [On Victoria Falls:] The most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa ... It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. --David Livingstone (18131873) Scottish missionary and explorer. In _Missionary Travels and Researches_ [1857]. - And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee." "Come, wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God." --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz" Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. _Hyperion_, bk. iii, ch. 5 [1839] - Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time. --Sir John Lubbock (18341913) The First Lord and Baron Avebury who was a British banker, politician, and archaeologist. _The Use of Life_, ch. IV "Recreation" [1894] [On nature:] A place to throw empty beer cans on Sunday. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. Attributed in Edward Abbey _Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness_ [1968]. [T]here is nevertheless a certain respect, a general duty to humanity, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures ... there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us. --Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) French moralist and essayist. _Essais_ (Essays) [1580-88] Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. --John Muir (18381914) Scottish-born naturalist who was largely responsible for the creation of Sequoia and Yosemite national parks. _Our National Parks_ [1901] "The Yellowstone National Park" Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense. --William L. Phelps (18651943) American educator, journalist, and man of letters. _Essays on Things_ [1930] The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself. --Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945) American Democratic statesman and President [19331945]. Letter to state governors [26 February 1937]. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. Speech before the Colorado Live Stock Association, Denver, [29 August 1910], "The New Nationalism." Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs To the silent wilderness[.] --Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822) English poet. "The Invitation", l. 21 It takes days of practice to learn the art of sauntering. Commonly we stride through the out-of-doors too swiftly to see more than the most obvious and prominent things. For observing nature, the best pace is a snails pace. --Edwin Way Teale (18991980) American naturalist, writer, and photographer. _Circle of the Seasons_ [1953] - Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen. The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in bright air these things will never change. The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry these things will always be the same. All things belonging to the earth will never change the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever. The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April. --Thomas Wolfe (19001938) American novelist. _You Can't Go Home Again_ [1940] - But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses. --Hans Zinsser (18781940) American bacteriologist. _Rats, Lice and History_, ch. 13 [1934] ----- aesthete [S-theet], noun: One having or affecting great sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature. idyll [EYE-dl], noun: A simple descriptive work, either in poetry or prose, dealing with simple, rustic life; pastoral scenes; and the like. pristine (adj.) 1. Immaculate: so clean and neat as to look as good as new. 2. Unspoiled: not yet ruined by human encroachment. rivulet [RIV-yuh-lut], noun: A small stream or brook. sough (noun) [sκf (or sau)] A pleasant rushing or whispering sound such as that made by wind on leaves or the surf. tempestuous (adj.) As if showing violent anger. Synonyms: angry, furious, raging, wild. verdure [VUR-jur], noun: Green; greenness; freshness of vegetation; as, the verdure of the meadows in June. end page | NAME CALLING - NASTINESS | NATIONALISM - NATIONS | NATURE | NAVY - NEGLECT | NEIGHBORS/NEIGHBORHOOD - NEW YORK | NEW YORK CITY | NEWS - NEWSPEAK | NICE - NONCONFORMITY | NIXON YEARS | NONSENSE - NOVEMBER | NUCLEAR WAR - NURSERY RHYMES | OBESITY - OBSTACLES | OBSTINACY - OKLAHOMA | OLD - OLD AGE | OLD-FASHIONED - OPERA | OPINION | OPPORTUNITY - ORGANIZATION | ORIGINALITY - OYSTERS | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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