Nature and Elements

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.

’Tis just like a summer birdcage in a garden; the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair, and are in a consumption, for fear they shall never get out.

Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren,

We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and bandied

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam Scilicet atque Ossae frondosum involvere Olympum;

Geniumque loci primamque deorum Tellurem Nymphasque et adhuc ignota precatur Flumina.

to reporters the day after his accession to the Presidency on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt:

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.

Books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.

So, naturalists observe, a flea

Then, rising with Aurora’s light,

Under the wide and starry sky

Go, little book, and wish to all

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

I hear a sudden cry of pain!

This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr Darwin has called ‘natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life’.

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffrey.

Still falls the Rain—

Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.