Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato […]

The only straight line in Nature that I remember is the spider swinging down from a twig.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!

They say there is a tune which is forbidden to be played in the European armies because it makes the Swiss desert, since it reminds them so forcibly of their hills and home. I have heard many Swiss tunes played in college. Balancing between getting and not getting a hard lesson, a breath of fragrant […]

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing… 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.

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. Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. […]

For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.