Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.
Interpretation
Nature presents contrasting experiences of age and youth, blending wisdom with the vitality of life.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the paradoxical aspects of nature, where it can endow youth with the wisdom typically associated with age, while simultaneously subjecting the experienced heart to the trials and tribulations of many winters. This reflects the complexity of life, where the coexistence of youthful energy and seasoned insight shapes our understanding of existence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a nature walk to inspire reflection on the life cycles present in 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?
I want us to save the creation-not just care about it, but to save it.
Cedars are terribly sensitive to change of time and light - sometimes they are bluish cold-green, then they turn yellow warm-green - sometimes their boughs flop heavy and sometimes float, then they are fairy as ferns and then they droop, heavy as heartaches.
Ultimately, the human being is in the mercy of nature.
The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?
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