Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Nature is, after all, the only book that offers important content on every page.

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.

Assuredly there is no more lovely worship of God than that for which no image is required, but which springs up in our breast spontaneously when nature speaks to the soul, and the soul speaks to nature face to face.

Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.

Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.

Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

To every one [Nature] appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.

The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.