Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 35
Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do, and understand so much, and so much only as he has observed, in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
To Aristotle the concept of nothingness was deeply disturbing. It seemed to present all sorts of problems and paradoxes. He came to believe Nature would for ever fight against the creation of true nothingness. As he put it, Nature abhors a vacuum. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Everything & Nothing: Nothing, BBC 2011
A vacuum is Nature’s default state. ibid.
The discovery of chaos was a real turning point in the history of science. As it tore down the Newtonian dream, scientists began to look more favourably at Turin and Bellusov’s work on spontaneous pattern formation. And perhaps more importantly as they did so they realised something truly astonishing: that there was a very deep and unexpected link – a truly cosmic connection – between Nature’s strange power to self-organise and the chaotic consequences of the butterfly effect. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, The Secret Life of Chaos, BBC 2010
They discovered that the natural world could be deeply, profoundly unpredictable. That the very same things that make it unpredictable also allow it to create pattern and structure. Order and chaos – seems the two are more deeply linked than we could have ever imagined. ibid.
Underlying nearly all the shapes in the natural world is a mathematical principle known as Self Similarity. ibid.
Turin’s patterns, Bellusov’s reactions and Mandelbrot’s fractals are all signposts pointing to a deep underlying natural principle. ibid.
Everywhere you look you can see evolution using Nature’s self-organising patterns. ibid.
Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. But she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it. Leonardo da Vinci
Human subtlety … will never devise an invention more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. Leonardo da Vinci
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
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, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Our task must be to free ourselves ... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty. Albert Einstein
The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me? Percy Bysshe Shelley
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
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. Henri Poincaré, Science and Method
I never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature. Björk
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. Robert Frost
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. John Ruskin
To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. Jane Austen
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Rich with the spoils of nature. Thomas Browne
If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries – the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold – the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. Mark Twain
I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The ‘cellar’ was tolerably well lighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a mile on either side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated; beyond these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast a deceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remote corners of the crater seem countless leagues re moved – made them seem like the camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for the imagination to work! You could imagine those lights the width of a continent away – and that hidden under the intervening darkness were hills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert – and even then the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on! – to the fires and far beyond! You could not compass it - it was the idea, of eternity made tangible – and the longest end of it made visible to the naked eye!
The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroad map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight sky. Imagine it – imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled network of angry fire! Mark Twain, article The Sacramento Daily Union 16th November 1866, ‘The Great Volcano of Kilauea’
Something totally unprecedented in human history – setting aside not a landscaped garden or a city park but a large tract of natural scenery for the future enjoyment of everyone. Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea: The Scripture of Nature 1851-1871
It was all part, Muir said, of his unconditional surrender to Nature. The winds and cascading creeks seemed to sing an exalting chorus audible to anyone willing to listen. He contemplated the life of a raindrop. ibid.
A God who revealed Himself through Nature. ibid.
If Yosemite was a temple, he [John Muir] would become its high priest. ibid.
Be not blind, but open-eyed, to the great wonders of Nature, familiar, everyday objects though they be to thee. But men are more wont to be astonished at the sun’s eclipse than at his unfailing rise. Orchoth Zadikkim
In my experience once young people sample the delights of country life and the wonders of Nature, oh, they can’t get enough of it. Carry on Camping 1969 starring Sid James & Kenneth Williams & Joan Sims & Charles Hawtrey & Terry Scott & Barbara Windsor & Bernard Bresslaw & Hattie Jacques & Peter Butterworth et al, director Gerald Thomas, Kenneth Williams to Hattie Jakes
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You can find it in the rain forest. On the frontiers of medical research. In the movies. And it’s all over the world of wireless communications. One of Nature’s biggest design secrets has finally been revealed. It’s an odd-looking shape you may never have heard of but it’s everywhere around you – the jagged repeating form called a fractal. Hunting the Hidden Dimension, Discovery Science 2013
It takes endless repetition ... self-similarity. ibid