Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Interpretation
Nature constantly changes and yet has a consistent essence.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects on the paradoxical nature of the environment, suggesting that while the physical aspects of nature are ever-changing, there remains a fundamental quality that defines it. It highlights the dynamic yet consistent character of the natural world, prompting us to appreciate its beauty and resilience amidst constant transformation.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a nature walk to inspire reflection on the ever-changing landscapes.
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?
If the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.
For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.
One goes to Nature only for hints and half-truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or translated them ... It is not so much what we see as what the thing seen suggests.
A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.
We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.
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