Nature quotes

Poem in Poems: First Series (1890), represented as “The Bee Is Not Afraid of Me” for source disambiguation; Project Gutenberg #12242. The title is an editorial first-line identifier.

The Secret Garden (1911), Chapter XXIII, “Magic.” Colin’s chant says that the flowers are growing and the roots are stirring, treating visible spring growth as part of the children’s imaginative “Magic” framework. The novel’s Magic language is literary and is not medical evidence.

“A Light Exists in Spring,” in Poems: Third Series (1896), represented through Project Gutenberg #12242. The Gutenberg text reproduces an early edited Dickinson edition, so punctuation and the editorial title are edition-specific rather than claimed as manuscript-final.

Travels in Alaska, same Stickeen excursion; the sentence follows Muir’s description of the world seeming newly born.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles describes labour as cooperation with nature and personifies nature as supplying the conditions under which human work produces food and materials; it is not a scientific account of agriculture.

‘Neutral Tones,’ in Wessex Poems and Other Verses, Project Gutenberg #3167. ‘We stood by a pond that winter day’ opens Hardy's four-stanza dramatic lyric, whose drained winter landscape becomes part of the speaker's memory of a failed relationship. The landscape is poetic imagery, not evidence that winter or particular natural scenes cause sadness.

Walden, chapter “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”

Song of Myself, in Whitman’s catalogue of equal wonders.

“Beclouded,” in Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. Nature is personified in the poem; the editorial heading and punctuation reflect the early printed edition.

“To a Waterfowl,” represented in Project Gutenberg #29700. The closing lines explicitly infer providential guidance from the bird’s flight; the claim remains Christian-inflected lyric reflection, not evidence about supernatural intervention.

The Story of My Heart (1883), Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #2317. The inherited Chapter I note is corrected: ‘It is eternity now’ occurs in Jefferies’s tumulus meditation after he writes that, recognising his inner consciousness / psyche, he cannot understand time. It is speculative spiritual autobiography and metaphysical-poetic reflection, not a scientific theory of time, physics or consciousness.

“To Autumn,” in Keats: Poems Published in 1820; Project Gutenberg #23684. The phrase opens a poem whose imagery follows ripening, harvest and the sounds of the season.

Essay “Walking”; Thoreau links uncultivated nature with renewal and human vitality.

Pepacton, natural-history essay; Project Gutenberg #7441. Burroughs immediately illustrates the claim with an unexpected observation of eagles and later repeats the naturalist’s maxim “Watch and wait.”

Field and Hedgerow, in the essay “Hours of Spring”; Project Gutenberg #7030. The book was collected posthumously by Jefferies’s widow, so individual essays may predate the 1889 volume.

Character Building, “Two Sides of Life,” Project Gutenberg #60484. This is an illustrative scene about perspective, not a claim that difficult conditions should always be reframed positively.

Daniel Deronda; spoken by Mirah while describing an experience of the natural world. The record keeps her fictional voice and immediate emotional context visible.

Job 12:7, King James Version; Job appeals to creatures and the earth as witnesses within his argument about divine power and human understanding.

Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3, Project Gutenberg #1528; Ulysses speaks to Achilles. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin’ is immediately defined by the following lines: people ‘with one consent praise new-born gauds’ and the present eye praises the present object. The retained line therefore belongs to Ulysses’s argument about novelty, reputation and forgotten past merit, not an uncomplicated statement of sentimental universal fellowship or Shakespearean autobiography.

Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Thursday, Project Gutenberg #4232. The sentence follows Thoreau’s claim that sincere travelling is no pastime and precedes his description of weariness, sore feet and experience acquired on the road; it is nineteenth-century travel philosophy rather than practical safety advice.

The World I Live In (1908), Chapter VI, “Smell, the Fallen Angel,” printed page 79, Project Gutenberg #27683. Keller calls smell a potent wizard after describing scent as capable of restoring distant places and earlier periods of her life; the sentence is autobiographical sensory reflection, not a general neuroscience claim.

On the Origin of Species, closing paragraph, first-edition wording represented by Project Gutenberg #1228. Later editions inserted “by the Creator” into this sentence; this record deliberately follows the 1859 form and keeps the quotation inside Darwin’s scientific argument about descent with modification.

Winter Sunshine, “The Exhilarations of the Road.” “Masculine” is Burroughs’s nineteenth-century descriptive adjective in this sentence; this collection preserves rather than modernizes the historical wording.

“The Darkling Thrush,” collected in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem first appeared at the turn of the century; this collection uses the represented collection as source identity.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Part I, Chapter X, “The Man of the Seas,” represented by Project Gutenberg #164 in English translation. Captain Nemo tells Professor Aronnax that the sea is everything and covers seven-tenths of the globe inside a longer speech mixing geography, Romantic nature language and his desire for independence from terrestrial power. It is translated fictional dialogue, not a current scientific source.

The Day Is Done, opening stanza; Longfellow introduces the evening mood before asking for soothing poetry.

Religio Medici, represented by Project Gutenberg #586. Browne develops this sentence inside an explicitly Christian natural-theology argument about providence, creation and the beauty of living forms. It is historical religious philosophy, not a scientific definition of nature.

“Postponement,” collected in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Project Gutenberg #3167. The poem's landscape frames a delayed relationship encounter and is not generic weather description.

“Neutral Tones,” Wessex Poems and Other Verses; Project Gutenberg #3167. The statement belongs to the poem's speaker and should not be treated as Hardy's universal doctrine that love deceives.

Psalm 104:24, King James Version; the larger psalm surveys creatures, landscapes, seasons, and provision as parts of creation.

Winter Sunshine, essay “The Exhilarations of the Road.” The sentence follows Burroughs’s comparison of winter walks in different directions and precedes his claim that all roads lead toward the walker’s sought-for Jerusalem.

Our National Parks; Muir follows the invitation with an account of nature’s peace flowing into the observer, linking mountains with restoration and attention.

The Tables Turned; the line follows Wordsworth’s claim that a vernal wood can teach moral insight.

“November,” in Poems: Second Series (1891), Project Gutenberg #12242. The passage is tied to the early edited collection and its editorial title.

Genesis 1:31, King James Version; the verse concludes the creation sequence with an assessment of everything that had been made.

“To a Mouse,” written in November 1785 and represented in Project Gutenberg #1279. The Scots wording appears in a poem that moves from sympathy with an animal to reflection on human foresight, regret and fear of the future.

“The Darkling Thrush,” Poems of the Past and the Present; Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem's final hope remains uncertain to the speaker rather than becoming a guarantee of optimism.

Moby Dick; Or, The Whale, Chapter 1, “Loomings,” represented by Project Gutenberg #2701. Ishmael describes going to sea when his mood becomes grim, restless and drawn toward death imagery. The passage is fictional first-person narration and a literary coping pattern, not mental-health, suicide-prevention or medical advice.

My First Summer in the Sierra, June 13 journal entry.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.

White Fang, Part II, Chapter IV, ‘The Wall of the World,’ Project Gutenberg #910. The narrator says ‘Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light’ as the grey cub disobeys fear and moves toward the cave opening. It remains literary animal-development narration and metaphor rather than a modern biological, developmental or behavioral law.

“Footprints on the Seashore,” represented in Twice-Told Tales, Project Gutenberg #13707. The narrator immediately says that forest and ocean summon him away from human haunts; “health and vigor” is literary self-description, not medical advice.

The Wind in the Willows, Chapter I, “The River Bank,” Project Gutenberg #27805. Water Rat tells Mole that nothing is half so worth doing as messing about in boats during their first excursion, then immediately crashes into the bank while daydreaming. The line is enthusiastic comic fictional dialogue, not a universal prescription about leisure or life priorities.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV, stanza CLXXVIII (178), Project Gutenberg #5131. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods” opens Byron’s famous stanza on solitude, shore, sea and nature. It remains poetic Romantic-era expression rather than scientific evidence about nature exposure or mental health.

My First Summer in the Sierra, journal entry in the Project Gutenberg public-domain text.

The Mountains of California, in Muir’s description of mountain forest scenery.

“Autumn,” Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. The title and punctuation follow the represented early printed edition rather than a modern manuscript-based Dickinson edition.

“A Well,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The ghost and haunted-house language is metaphorical, emphasizing nature's unresolved mystery.

Winter Sunshine, title essay; Project Gutenberg #4279. Burroughs follows by contrasting summer pageantry with winter’s enduring elements, sky, stars, moon and simplified landscape.