The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.
Interpretation
Nature is abundant and spreads many seeds to ensure survival and growth despite many facing challenges.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the resilience and abundance inherent in nature. It suggests that plants produce an overwhelming number of seeds, acknowledging that while many will not survive, this overproduction ensures that some will thrive and continue the cycle of life. This illustrates the idea of hope and the determination to persist, reinforcing the importance of not only survival but also the potential for regeneration and continuity in the natural world.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about environmental conservation to emphasize the resilience of nature.
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?
What a friend we have in a tree, the tree is the symbol of hope, self improvement and what people can do for themselves.
I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.
Why is it that so many of us persist in thinking that autumn is a sad season? Nature has merely fallen asleep, and her dreams must be beautiful if we are to judge by her countenance.
I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.
[My] excursions provided a unique opportunity for observing [the gorillas' behavior] in their natural habitat... Then, all too soon, the infants were demanded for their trip to the zoo. ... [H]appily the babies did not know they would never see their mountain home again
Harry looked down and saw deep green mountains and lakes, coppery in the sunset.
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