What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!
We turn our back on nature, we are ashamed of beauty. Our miserable tragedies have the smell of an office, and their blood is the color of dirty ink.[Nous tournons le dos à la nature, nous avons honte de la beauté. Nos misérables tragédies traînent une odeur de bureau et le sang dont elles ruissellent a couleur d’encre grasse.]
We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body.
Water is the driver of nature.[L’acqua è ‘l vetturale della natura.]
Under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me, and turn his merry note unto the sweet bird’s throat, come hither, come hither, come hither, here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather.
Too much kindness and respect are given to the unseen and not enough to humanity. It seems that in our nature we loathe each other and bestow our respect and love on the abstract.
To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.
To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself.[Se révolter contre la nature revient à se révolter contre soi-même.]
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
