Mother Nature

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

"Yet neither spinnes, nor cards, ne cares nor fretts, But to her mother Nature all her care she letts."

"For all that Nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth."

"Once, when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung."

"Nature is always wise in every part."

"Nature speaks clearly to him who knows how to understand her, and has no need of interpretation."

"Nature never did betray The Heart that Loved her."

"I wonder if a sillier and more ignorant catachresis than "Mother Nature" was ever perpetrated? It is because Nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation. One thinks of wild animals as savage, but the fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror. There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by 'Mother Nature.' Each species must strive to survive, and that will do, by every means in its power, however foul—unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct."

"Such blessings Nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores. In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace And waste their music on the savage race."