The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results.
Interpretation
Nature holds hidden potential and valuable outcomes, even in unpredictable circumstances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that early endeavors in various fields such as agriculture, astronomy, and zoology reveal a fundamental truth about nature: it can be deceptive and unpredictable, yet within its chaos lies the potential for significant discoveries and benefits. This perspective encourages us to recognize and seek out the valuable lessons and results that emerge from what may initially seem like randomness or disorder.
In practice
In a speech about environmental conservation, one might say, 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out, nature's hidden gifts can be found if we take the time to explore her depths.'
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Nature yields her most profound secrets to the person who is determined to uncover them.
For the sight of the angry weather saddens my soul and the sight of the town, sitting like a bereaved mother beneath layers of ice, oppresses my heart.
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.
Great attention gets paid to rainforests because of the diversity of life there. Diversity in the oceans is even greater.
[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.
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