Those who cross the seas change their climate but not their character.
—Roman proverbIt’s only the futility of the first flood that prevents God from sending a second.
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1794The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.
—John Henry Poynting, 1899Nature never jests.
—Albrecht von Haller, 1751The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil-fuel use.
—Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2008Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
—Lewis Mumford, 1962Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
—Francis Bacon, 1625There is something stirring in the way civilization gapes like a savage at the achievements of nature.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.
—Aldo Leopold, 1933It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.
—Mary Boykin Chesnut, 1865Are we not ourselves nature, nature without end?
—Stanisław Lem, 1961The earth is beautiful and bright and kindly, but that is not all. The earth is also terrible and dark and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1970It seems to me that we all look at nature too much and live with her too little.
—Oscar Wilde, 1897The earth is our existence, and our body is attached to the earth.
—Daulat Qazi, c. 1650A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and oneself anew.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1920In tampering with the earth, we tamper with a mystery.
—Jonathan Schell, 2000Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.
Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?
—D.H. Lawrence, 1920The oldest voice in the world is the wind.
—Donald Culross Peattie, 1950It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
—James Hutton, 1795A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684It is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.
—Wendell Berry, 1985You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.
—Horace, 20 BCWe seek with our human hands to create a second nature in the natural world.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BCThere is a time to battle against nature, and a time to obey her. True wisdom lies in making the right choice.
—Arthur C. Clarke, 1979The sea is mother-death, and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.
—Anne Sexton, 1971Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.
—Ilka Chase, 1969We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.
—Barbara Ward, 1972Before the earth could become an industrial garbage can, it had first to become a research laboratory.
—Theodore Roszak, 1972Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!
—Margaret Atwood, 2015Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns –
Adds poignancy to Winter
When nature is overriden, she takes her revenge.
—Marya Mannes, 1958Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896