Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile, some have a sad expression, some are pensive and diffident, others again are plain, honest and upright.
Gie me a spark o' nature's fire, that's a' the learning I desire.
Light may be shed on man and his origins.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection.
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the "Survival of the fittest", is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them
I wanted to say something about the universe. There's God, angels, plants... and horseshit.
When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.
The dinosaur's eloquent lesson is that if some bigness is good, an overabundance of bigness is not necessarily better.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery.
Nature thrives on patience; man on impatience.
The soil, in return for her service, keeps the tree tied to her; the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.
What mighty battles have I seen and heard waged between the trees and the west wind - an Iliad fought in the fields of air.
Grass is the forgiveness of nature - her constant benediction. Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal.
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination, but the combination is locked up in the safe.
