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?
There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.
Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.
Spring has again returned. _x000D_ _x000D_ The Earth is like a child that knows many poems._x000D_ _x000D_ Many, O so many. For the hardship_x000D_ _x000D_ of such long learning she receives the prize._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ Strict was her teacher. _x000D_ _x000D_ The white in the old man's beard pleases us._x000D_ _x000D_ Now, what to call green, to call blue,_x000D_ _x000D_ we dare to ask: She knows, She knows!
For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.
I need beaches, and blackness, and moonlit nakedness.
As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".
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