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By space the Universe encompasses and swallows me as an atom, by thought I encompass it.

Moreover, the many dead trunks that stand like skeletons, never fail to give to these primeval woods a character of solemnity, absent in those of countries long civilized.

Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest.

Sitting down on a block of granite, it was delightful to watch the various insects and birds as they flew past.

The forest is an eternal mediator between winds and gravity in their never-ending struggle for the possession of the waters.

On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes—changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky.

Have you anything better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the sea?

My world is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical colour and sound; but without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life.

Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children.

Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom.

Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

It is not down in any map; true places never are

Every artist does something more than copy Nature; more comes out in his account than goes into the original experience.

The greatness and the minuteness of nature pass all understanding.

Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them.

After listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by this pine-music alone.

Nowhere will you see the majestic operations of nature more clearly revealed beside the frailest, most gentle and peaceful things.

The whole world seems richer now that I have found this plant in so noble a landscape.

The dullest eye in the world must surely be quickened by such trees as these.

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

But we have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more are we capable of seeing.

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you.

There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy, than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.