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?
I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!
Oh, this is the joy of the rose;_x000D_ _x000D_ That it blows,_x000D_ _x000D_ And goes.
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor_x000D_ _x000D_ and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.
We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources ... But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.
With the world's human population now at seven billion and growing, and the demand for technology and modern conveniences increasing, we can't control all our negative impacts. But we have to find better ways to live within the limits nature and its cycles impose.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.