The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite. William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798
I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasen and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. ibid.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose,
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth ... William Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 1807
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind. ibid.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the lake beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. William Wordsworth, I Wander’d Lonely as a Cloud
Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature. Susanne Langer, Mind 1967
Custom that is before the law; Nature that is above all art. Samuel Daniel, 1563-1619
Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up. Miguel de Cervantes
Sir William Coldstream: I was excited by the idea of what would happen if one tried to make an absolutely direct record of one’s experience of Nature with the fewest number of things coming in between oneself and it and with the least awareness or thought about style. Dr James Fox, British Masters III: A New Jerusalem, BBC 2011
If the sight of blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has the power to move you, if the simplest things of Nature have a message that you understand, rejoice – for your soul is alive. Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh’s version of nature would always be earthier, clumsier, smellier, truer. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Van Gogh, BBC 2006
Leonardo had this interesting attitude towards the natural world. He felt that it was in a sense it was pent-up power, which was at any moment liable to burst and destroy everything utterly. Michael Baigent, author Racing Toward Armageddon
Choose only one master – Nature. Rembrandt
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. Claude Monet
You come to Nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect. Pierre-Auguste Rodin
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature. Pierre-Auguste Rodin
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated. Pierre-Auguste Rodin
A hint – don’t paint too much direct from Nature. Art is an abstraction! Study Nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God – to create like our Divine Master. Paul Gauguin, 1888
When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God-made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. Paul Cézanne
For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations. Paul Cézanne
Art has a harmony parallel with nature. Paul Cézanne
The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it. Paul Cézanne
Painting must give us the flavour of nature’s eternity. Paul Cézanne
He says at the beginning though that he wants to produce a pure and unaffected view of nature. Great Artists with Tim Marlow: John Constable
My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature. Edward Hopper
A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great. Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art December 1769
Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator. Amedio Modigliani
We sow the seed right. Nature grows the seed. And we eat the seed ... The Young Ones: Sick, Neil, BBC 1984
Nature in her indifference makes no distinction between good and evil. Anatole France, The Revolt of the Angels
I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments? Werner Heisenberg
We need the tonic of wildness ... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here – the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country ... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all its warriors ... I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. Henry David Thoreau, The Journal
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. Cormac McCarthy, The Road