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?
Momo listened to everyone and everything - even to the rain and the wind and the pine trees - and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion.
Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.
Dublin dwindles so beautifully; there is no harsh separation between it and the country. It fades away, whereas London seems to devour the country; an army of buildings come and take away a beautiful park, and you never seem to get quite out of sight of a row of houses.
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.
Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal.
Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man
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