Theme

Nature

Weather, animals, the night sky, and the body as part of the world. Not scenery. These speakers are usually trying to get their scale right.

1. Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to…Marcus AureliusMeditations
2. To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.William BlakeAuguries of Innocence
3. In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.Albert CamusReturn to Tipasa
4. Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.Charles DarwinOn the Origin of Species
5. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.EcclesiastesEcclesiastes
6. April is the cruellest month.T. S. EliotThe Waste Land
7. Gray, dear friend, is all theory, and green the golden tree of life.Johann Wolfgang von GoetheFaust
8. You cannot step twice into the same river.HeraclitusFragment, reported by Plato and Plutarch
9. A house is a machine for living in.Le CorbusierToward an Architecture
10. Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.John Gillespie Magee Jr.High Flight
11. It is not down on any map; true places never are.Herman MelvilleMoby-Dick
12. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.Pablo NerudaEvery Day You Play
13. Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.Blaise PascalPensées
14. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.Carl SaganCosmos
15. If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?Percy Bysshe ShelleyOde to the West Wind
16. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.Henry David ThoreauWalden

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