I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep appreciation for nature akin to a child's love, highlighting its nurturing qualities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson articulates a profound connection with nature, suggesting that it embodies a love that is pure and innocent, much like the affection a child holds for the world around them. He likens his experience of life to the vibrant growth of corn and melons in the warm sun, illustrating that nature is life-giving and essential for flourishing, underscoring an intrinsic harmony between humanity and the natural world.
In practice
During a nature conference, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of preserving the environment.
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?
Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience.
Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.
There is one, and only one solution, and we have almost no time to try it. We must turn all our resources to repairing the natural world, and train all our young people to help. They want to; we need to give them this last chance to create forests, soils, clean waters, clean energies, secure communities, stable regions, and to know how to do it from hands-on experience.
I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song.
We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
Most people have forgotten how to live with living creatures, with living systems and that, in turn, is the reason why man, whenever he comes into contact with nature, threatens to kill the natural system in which and from which he live.
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