Nature

Nature is the original text-book in the school of life, of which all others are but secondary and imperfect transcripts.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, The School of Life (1881).

Locked behind windows of glass that frame the world like a picture, breathing filtered air whose temperature has been determined by the flick of a dial, we can be forgiven for assuming that what the natural world does is no longer of any concern to us. But we make this assumption at our own peril.
~ William Ashworth, Nor Any Drop to Drink (1982).

To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King.
~ Charles William ("Will") Beebe, Journal entry (31 December 1893).

The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, -- melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.
~ Charles William ("Will") Beebe, The Log of the Sun (1906). Night Music of the Swamp

Blue oblivion, largely lit, smiled and smiled at me.
~ William Rose Benét, Mid-Ocean

Where man is not, nature is barren.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

You throw the sand against the wind
And the wind blows it back again.
~ William Blake, MS Note-Book

Beautiful landscape! I could look on thee
For hours, -- unmindful of the storm and strife,
And mingled murmurs of tumultuous life.
~ William Lisle Bowles, On a Beautiful Landscape

Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
~ Bill Bradley

Descending once from an unfamiliar hill
on what we thought was the only path until
we came to a place we never saw before
we stopped,
and, hesitating, took a few steps more
and stopped again.
~ William Bronk, My Father Photographed with Friends (1976). The Fool in the Forest

Nature is every where liberal in dispensing her beauties and her variety -- and I pity those who look round and declare they see neither.
~ William Hill Brown, The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature. Founded in Truth (1789). Letter VII

Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). Thanatopsis (written in 1811)

Here is continual worship; -- Nature, here,
In the tranquillity that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). Forest Hymn (written in 1825)

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems(1832). The Gladness Of Nature

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature.
~ William Cullen Bryant, Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood (1815).

The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows. . . .
~ William Cullen Bryant

The groves were God's first temples.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). Forest Hymn (written in 1825)

The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, --
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). Thanatopsis (written in 1811)

The sounds I had heard seemed worthy to mingle with this bright and perfumed atmosphere, and to thrill the beautiful scenery around me.
~ William Cullen Bryant

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name --
The Prairies.
~ William Cullen Bryant, The Prairies (1832).

Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild
Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops
The beauty and the majesty of earth,
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way.
~ William Cullen Bryant, Monument Mountain (1824).

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). Thanatopsis (written in 1811)

. . . I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.
~ Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods (1998).

Much as I admire sand's miraculous ability to be transformed into useful objects like glass and concrete, I am not a great fan of it in its natural state. To me, it is primarily a hostile barrier that stands between a car park and water. It blows in your face, gets in your sandwiches, swallows vital objects like car keys and coins. In hot countries, it burns your feet and makes you go "Ooh! Ah!" and hop to the water in a fashion that people with better bodies find amusing. When you are wet, it adheres to you like stucco, and cannot be shifted with a fireman's hose. But -- and here's the strange thing -- the moment you step on a beach towel, climb into a car or walk across a recently vacuumed carpet it falls off. For days afterwards, you tip astounding, mysteriously undiminishing piles of it onto the floor every time you take off your shoes, and spray the vicinity with quantities more when you peel off your socks. Sand stays with you for longer than many contagious diseases.
~ Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island (1995).

Ah, my friend, my reader! . . . we cannot put in words the things that we see from these lonely mountains . . . this church, whose pillars are the mountains, whose roof is in heaven itself, whose music comes from the harp-strings which the earth has laid over her bosom, which we call pine-trees; and from which the hand of the Unseen draws forth a ceaseless symphony rolling ever round the world.
~ Sir William Francis Butler, The Wild North Land (1873).

There is no mountain range to come up across the skyline, no river to lay its glistening folds along the middle distance, no dark forest to give shade to foreground or to bring perspective, no speck of life, no trace of man, nothing but the wilderness. Reduced thus to its own nakedness, space stands forth with almost terrible grandeur.
~ Sir William Francis Butler, The Wild North Land (1873).

We must realize that we can no longer throw our wastes away because there is no "away".
~ William T. Cahill, (1971).

Mild is the Eve and mild the ebbing Tide,
And yet that hollow moaning will not go,
Nor the old Fears that with the Sea abide.
~ William M. W. Call, from Golden Histories (1871). The Haunted Shore

In the prehuman environment much of that carbon removed from the atmosphere by green plants was locked safely away in the earth, where it could not be returned to the air by respiration. Disregarding his own need for a nearly carbon-free atmosphere, man perceived the deposits of coal and petroleum not as safe underground storage of natural pollutants, but as 'fossil fuels'; he set about eagerly unearthing them to fulfill his growing demand for energy.
~ William R. Catton, Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (1980).

A lake, -- the blue-eyed Walden, that doth smile
Most tenderly upon its neighbor pines.
~ William Ellery Channing, the younger, from Poems, Second Series (1847). Walden

Great joy in camp. We are in view of the ocean, this great Pacific Ocean which we have been so long anxious to see.
~ Captain William Clark, Journal entry (7 November 1805).

Between the dark lakes where the dark rivers flow
there is no ferry waiting on the shore of rock
and no man holding a long oar,
ready to take your last coin.
This is the real earth and the real water it contains.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). Water Table

The Creator's gifts from our Mother, The Earth, have been good and kind to us all, sustaining us throughout our history. Today, if we look around, we can witness the results of our disregard for her well-being. It is now time for us to recognize her needs, to care for her, to rebalance our relationship with her, for if we do not do this, our children and their children will have no future. This will require us to rightly assert our love for all things and each other. Today is a good day to begin this work.
~ William (Morning Star) Commanda

All speak one language, all with one sweet voice
Cry to her universal realm, Rejoice!
~ William Cowper, from The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (1842). Hope (written in 1782)

As if the world and they were hand and glove.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Table Talk (written in 1781)

Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book II. The Time-Piece

Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book V. The Winter Morning Walk

Nature, exerting an unwearied power,
Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Table Talk (written in 1781)

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
The tone of languid nature.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book I. The Sofa

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness!
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book II. The Time-Piece

The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade:
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
~ William Cowper, Published in the Gentleman's Magazine (January 1785). The Poplar Field

The environmental movement needs to be careful not to set itself in opposition to humanism; however strongly we may be committed to non-anthropocentric ways of thinking about the natural world and how best to protect it.
~ William Cronon

O listen to the sounding sea
That beats on the remorseless shore,
O listen! for that sound will be
When our wild hearts shall beat no more.
~ George William Curtis, in Yale Book of American Verse (1912). O listen to the sounding sea

Make it a green peace.
~ Bill Darnell (at a meeting of the Don't Make a Wave Committee, 1970), Quoted in The Greenpeace Chronicle (1979).

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues.
~ William Henry (W.H.) Davies, Farewell to Poesy (1910). Kingfisher

Mountains have a decent influence on men. I have never met along the trails of the high mountains a mean man who would cheat and steal. Certainly most men who are raised there or who work there are as wholesome as the mountains themselves. Those who explore them or foot or horseback usually are open, friendly men.
~ William Orville Douglas, Of Men and Mountains (1950).

When one moves through the forest, his sense of discovery is quickened. Man is back in the environment from which he emerged to build factories, churches, and schools. He is primitive again, matching his wits against the earth and sky. He is free of the restraints of society and free of its safeguards too.
~ William Orville Douglas, Of Men and Mountains (1950).

One year is sufficient to behold all the magnificence of nature, nay, even one day and night; for more, is but the same brought again.
~ William Drummond (of Hawthornden), from Flowers of Zion; or Spiritual Poems (1623). A Cypress Grove

This earth is as a table-book, and men are the notes; the first are washen out, that new may be written in.
~ William Drummond (of Hawthornden), from Flowers of Zion; or Spiritual Poems (1623). A Cypress Grove

Nature cares little about laws and states; her passion is for the family and the child. If she can preserve these she is indifferent to governments and dynasties and smiles at those who busy themselves with transferring constitutions.
~ William James "Will" Durant

An intricate and inexhaustible series of hidden affinities and resemblances, nature hid itself within layer upon layer . . . The purely exoteric sciences were merely vehicles, so to speak, that carry the esoteric meanings hidden within them.
~ William Eamon, Science and Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (1994).

Once you have tasted the secrets, you will have a strong desire to understand them.
~ William Eamon, Science and Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (1994).

Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.
~ William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (October 1929). June Second, 1910

There is science as well as poetry in calling Beauty the smile, and Music the laughter, of Nature.
~ William Channing Gannett, Of Making One's Self Beautiful (1899). A Recipe for Good Cheer

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station.
~ William Gibson, Neuromancer (July 1984). Part 1: Chiba City Blues

Man's a ribald -- Man's a rake,
Man is Nature's sole mistake!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, Princess Ida (1884 opera).

Considered in this light, a forest is a picture of the world. We find trees of all ages, kinds, and degrees, -- the old and the young -- the rich and the poor -- the stately and the depressed -- the healthy and the infirm. The order of Nature is thus preserved in the world, and the beauty of Nature is thus preserved in the forest.
~ William Gilpin, Remarks on Forest Scenery, and other Woodland Views (1791). Book III. Section V

It is no exaggerated praise to call a tree the grandest and most beautiful of all the productions of the earth.
~ William Gilpin, Remarks on Forest Scenery, and other Woodland Views (1791). Book I. Section I

He says, What am I, that I should be the object of this? and whence comes it? He sees neither the fountain from which it springs, nor the banks that confine it. To him it is an ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore.
~ William Godwin, Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries (1831). Essay XV. Of Love and Friendship

We have always believed that the atmosphere will act in the future as it has in the past. This assumption can fail in some years but when applied over a period of several years we find that the atmosphere and ocean does indeed have a long period memory in most years.
~ William Gray, Colorado State Press Release (6 December 2001). Colorado State Hurricane Forecast Team Indicates an Active Season for 2002

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.
~ Stephen William Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988).

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner -- and then to thinking!
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.
~ William Hazlitt, in Literary Examiner (London, September - December 1823). Common Places. LX

If from the top of a long cold barren hill I hear the distant whistle of a thrush which seems to come up from some warm woody shelter beyond the edge of the hill, this sound coming faint over the rocks with a mingled feeling of strangeness and joy, the idea of the place about me, and the imaginary one beyond will all be combined together in such a manner in my mind as to become inseparable.
~ William Hazlitt, An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805)

The fields his study, nature was his book.
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
~ William Hazlitt, from Sketches and Essays (1839). On Taste

The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience.
~ William Herschel

The Wind one morning sprang up from sleep,
Saying, "Now for a frolic, now for a leap!
Now for a madcap galloping chase!
I'll make a commotion in every place!"
~ William Howitt, The Wind in a Frolic

[I] started, full of pleasing anticipations, for the wood; for how pleasant a place it was to be in! What a wild beauty and fragrance and melodiousness it possessed above all forests, because of that mystery that drew me to it!
~ William Henry ("W.H.") Hudson, Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904).

The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me; for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and the tempests and my passions are one.
~ William Henry ("W.H.") Hudson, Hampshire Days (1903).

{T}he whole of nature . . . is a conjugation of the verb eat, in the active and passive.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, Second Series (1922). Confessio Fidei

Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life.
~ William James, in The Letters of William James (1920). Letter to son, William (1900)

The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
~ William James

Water has an endless horizon; there is no limitation when you look out into the water. There's nothing to interfere with the mind's eye projecting itself as far as it can possibly imagine. I suppose it's the same way people in the Midwest feel about watching amber waves of grain or endless rows of cornfields. There is something exhilarating about it.
~ Billy Joel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (19 July 1990). Billy Joel: Went Back to His Roots and Found Water

Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries. Every phase of her working shows plan, calmness, reliability, and the absence of hurry.
~ William George Jordan, The Majesty of Calmness (1900). Hurry, the Scourge of America

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.
~ Willem de Kooning, Lecture in New York City (1950).

[E]verything in temporal nature is descended out of that which is eternal, and stands as a palpable visible outbirth of it.
~ William Law, An Appeal To all that Doubt, or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel (1740).

What can your eye desire to see, your ears to hear, your mouth to taste, or your nose to smell, that is not to be had in an orchard? with abundance of variety?
~ William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden (1597).

For he's one of Nature's Gentlemen, the best of every time.
~ William James Linton, Nature's Gentleman. Stanza 1

Nature above and below tingles with the joy of mere living -- a joy that bubbles over, like a spring, so that all who will, even of the race of men who have lost or forgotten their birthright, may come back and drink of its abundance and be satisfied.
~ William J. Long, School of the Woods: Some Life Studies of Animal Instincts and Animal Training (1902). The Gladsome Life

Resplendent arch, thy mighty span
Heralds good-will and peace to man.
~ William M'Comb, from The Poetical Works of William M'Comb (1864). The Rainbow

This poet about whom to you I sing
Played his harp so beautifully
And sang so sweetly
That the great trees lowered their branches
And the rivers changed their course
To hear him and listen.
~ Guillaume de Machaut, Ode à la Musique (c. 1372).

The colors of the underwater rock [are] as pale and delicate as those in the wardrobe of an 18th-century marchioness.
~ William Manchester (on New Guinea), Good-bye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (1980).

Surely there is a hidden power that reigns
'Mid the lone majesty of untamed nature,
Controlling sober reason.
~ William Masonfrom Poems (1763). Caractacus (1759)

Wait. Hold your breath.
The spell will be lost if the singer senses you near;
The song will cease, which, hearing, you fear would be death
Not to hear.
~ William H. Matchett, Water Ouzel (2000). Swamp Robin

I want to tell what the forests
were like
I will have to speak
in a forgotten language.
~ William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees (1988). Witness

When we destroy the so-called natural world around us we're simply destroying ourselves. And I think it's irreversible.
~ William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 102 (Spring 1987). The Art of Poetry No. 38

How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
~ William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains (1896).

Wind, wind! thou art sad, art thou kind?
Wind, wind, unhappy! thou art blind,
Yet still thou wanderest the lily-seed to find.
~ William Morris

And we, with Nature's heart in tune,
Concerted harmonies.
~ William Motherwell, Jeanie Morrison. Stanza 8

I passed them by, and blessed them all; I felt that it was good
To leave unmoved the creatures small whose home was in the wood.
~ William Motherwell, Sing On, Blithe Bird

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885). Self-Overcoming

I draw circles and sacred boundaries about me; fewer and fewer climb with me up higher and higher mountains.-I am building a mountain chain out of ever-holier mountains.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885). Old and New Tablets

Nature, as all the world knows, can be eloquent enough upon occasion; but those who wish to hear her true voice must approach her without preoccupations of their own; and as this is not a common condition among mortals, Nature for most of us only acts the part of an echo or a mirror.
~ William Edward (W.E.) Norris, A Bachelor's Blunder (1886).

The works of nature want only to be contemplated.
~ Reverend William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). Chapter XXVII: Conclusion

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Education

Nature makes some boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps

A strong nor'-wester's blowing, Bill!
Hark! don't ye hear it roar now?
Lord help 'em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!
~ William Pitt, The Sailor's Consolation

The lesson here is one that conservation has underscored over and again: managing marine resources sustainably, not just for use today but over time, maximizes economic return, strengthening local communities and our national economy. . . . The biological health of our oceans is also essential to international security, and to U.S. interests at home and abroad. For generations, the oceans have served as a first line of defense against foreign enemies. They still play a critical role.
~ William K. Reilly, Testimony Before the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (23 July 2002). Restore the Seas! Endangered Fish, Reefs and Coasts: A Call for Action

To secure our environmental legacy for future generations, we must find ways to reconcile humanity more satisfactorily with the natural systems upon which all human life and civilizations depend. We must recognize that the natural systems of which we are part have an intrinsic worth transcending narrow utilitarian values. They must be preserved for their own sake.
~ William K. Reilly

Yet in the walks I take through nature in quest of truth and demonstration, I recognize a poetry in earth and sea and sky, ruled in their cycles of harmonious actions, deeper and more sublime than ever muse untaught in science could inspire.
~ William Barton Rogers, Quoted in Appalachian Trailway News (May/June 1984). William B. Rogers: A Man and A Mountain

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth -- and I'm one.
~ Robert William Service, from The Spell of the Yukon, and Other Verses (1907). The Spell of the Yukon

River and plain and mighty peak -- and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed
 at the foot of the throne of God.
~ Robert William Service, Ballads of a Cheechako (1909). The Ballad Of Blasphemous Bill

There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.
~ Robert William Service, from The Spell of the Yukon, and Other Verses (1907). The Call of the Wild

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have, and kiss'd
The wild waves whist.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act I, scene ii

Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!
~ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline. Act III, scene iii

In nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act I, scene ii

Live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 20

Nature is fine in love, and where 't is fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
~ William Shakespeare, Coriolanus. Act II, scene i

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.
~ William Shakespeare

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And, being frank, she lends to those are free.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 4

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act I, scene i

Now go we in content
To liberty, and not to banishment.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act I, scene iii

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act I, scene i

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Act III, scene iii

Sits the wind in that corner?
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II. Act III, scene i

The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act I, scene iii

To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene ii

Silence on a hill where the path ended
and then the forest below
moving in one long whisper
as evening touched the leaves.
~ William Stafford, Some Things the World Gave

Tasting of the sweet damp woods and of the rain one inch above the meadow:
It was like feasting upon air.
~ William Jay Smith, The Tin Can and Other Poems (1966). Morels

The ocean and I have many pebbles
To find and wash off and roll into shape.
~ William Stafford, from The Way It Is (1993).

The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.
~ William Stafford, from The Way It Is (1993). Earth Dweller

You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
~ William Stafford, The Darkness Around Us is Deep (1993). Ask Me

River, take me along
In your sunshine,
Sing me your song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river,
You changing old river,
Let's you and me river
Run down to the sea.
~ Bill Staines, from The Whistle of the Jay (1979 album). River

I liked the activity of hiking; for me it was real entertainment. This was how I got the feel for nature, the sense of being part of it with absolute forgetfulness of self. It was here I became sensitive to things.
~ Will Henry Stevens, Tulane University (unpublished manuscript, 1947-48). Will Henry's Nature: The Pictoral Ideas of W. H. Stevens

Look at the trees now, aren't they bare? But you let a certain day come for spring and they'll come out. They won't be the same leaves that was there last year, but when they come out they're so pretty. I look out at those trees and just think, Oh, you're so beautiful. God sure dressed you up. I say that to a tree. The work I have done, if I have to do it over, I'm willin'. But I don't want to go back. Let me be the leaf just laying at the foot of the tree giving it substance to grow.
~ Willie Mae Ford Smith, Quoted in I Dream a World (1989).

I wandered, where never the track
Of a human creature had rustled
The silence of mighty woods.
~ William Wetmore Story, in Graffiti d'Italia (1868). Cleopatra

Like a shadow that does not permit us to jump over it, but moves with us to maintain its proper distance, pollution is nature's answer to culture. When we have learned to recycle pollution into potent information, we will have passed over completely into the new cultural ecology.
~ William Irwin Thompson, Pacific Shift (1986).

The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.
~ Willie Tyler

Braying of arrogant brass, whimper of querulous reeds.
~ William Watson, Hymn to the Sea, Part iii

The timber wolves will be our friends.
We'll stay up late and howl,
At the moon, till nighttime ends,
Before going on the prowl.
~ Bill Watterson, from Yukon Ho! (1989). The Yukon Song

Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.
~ William Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (2nd ed., 1847), Vol 1. Book I, Chapter II, Section 9: Man the Interpreter of Nature

Get upon a mountain,
Beller out a yodel!
~ Mason Williams, from Them Poems (2000). Them Yodel Yellers

Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language.
~ Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976).

[I]f you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go. We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Statement before the Senate Subcommittee on Forest & Public Lands Management, Washington DC (13 July 1995).

. . . but sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

Well, they say nature hates a vacuum, Big Daddy.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

It is his singing
outshines the noise
of leaves clashing in the wind.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917). Metric Figure

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson

No life can be barren which hears the whisper of the wind in the branches, or the voice of the sea as it breaks upon the shore; and no soul can lack happiness looking up to the midnight stars.
~ William Winter

Though all the bards of earth were dead,
And all their music passed away,
What Nature wishes should be said
She'll find the rightful voice to say!
~ William Winter, from The Poems of William Winter (1909). The Golden Silence

All things that love the sun are out of doors.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes (1807). Resolution and Independence

Among these rocks and stones, methinks, I see
More than the heedless impress that belongs
To lonely nature's casual work: they bear
A semblance strange of power intelligent,
And of design not wholly worn away.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book III: Despondency

And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree
Comes not by casting in a formal mould,
But from its own divine vitality.
~ William Wordsworth, A Poet! He Hath Put His Heart to School

As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die!
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, Vol. 2 (1800). The Old Cumberland Beggar

Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject

I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
~ William Wordsworth, My heart leaps up when I behold (26 March 1802)

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak
A lasting inspiration, sanctified
By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved,
Others will love, and we will teach them how;
Instruct them how the mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book XIV: Conclusion

The common growth of Mother Earth
Suffices me, -- her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.
~ William Wordsworth, Peter Bell, Prologue

The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book I: Introduction -- Childhood and School-time

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune.
~ William Wordsworth

The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
~ William Wordsworth, Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle

The tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

Thou unassuming commonplace
Of Nature.
~ William Wordsworth, To the Daisy, Part II

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it griev'd my heart to think
What man has made of man.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines Written in Early Spring

Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.
~ William Wordsworth, Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland (1807)

Ye mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed
My lofty speculations; and in thee,
For this uneasy heart of ours, I find
A never-failing principle of joy
And purest passion.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book II: School-time (Continued)

There is only one nature -- the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.
~ William Allan ("Bill") Wulf

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Rose (1893). The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Tower (1928). Sailing to Byzantium

For the orange flower
Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood
Is the love of maidenhood;
And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour,
He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream,
No, never again shall he meet with a flower that shall seem
So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years,
At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath,
The past shall arise,
And his eyes shall be dim with tears,
And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise
Though he stand in the Shambles of death.
~ William Young, Wishmakers' Town (1885). The Flower-Seller