Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn.

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

“Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.” 

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. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

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

Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown.

The ancient precept, “Know thyself”, and the modern precept, “Study nature”, become at last one maxim.

If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

“The sky was pure opal now.” 

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some 20 or 30 farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.

The earth laughs in flowers.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.” 

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

All the good of nature is the soul’s, and may be had, if paid for in nature’s lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow.