Quote#Nature
There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing…
Quote byPatrick Matthew · 1790–1874
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Appendix B.
English (original)
There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation... [The] progeny of the same parents, under great differences of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.
— Patrick Matthew
You may also like
Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable inconvenience, from the dogmatical classification of plants, and have all along been floundering between species and variety, which certainly under culture soften into each other.
Geologists discover... an almost complete difference to exist between the species or stamp of life, of one epoch from that of every other. We are therefore led to admit, either of a repeated miraculous creation; or of a power of change, …
The sunn must lend his goulden beames, Soft windes their breath, green trees their shade, Sweete fields their flowers, cleare springs their streams, Ere such another smyle bee made.
Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Why o'er the waves dost fly? O, rather, bird, with me Through the fair land rejoice!
We'll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly, Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy: Fish-dinners will make a lass spring like a flea, Dame Venus, love's lady, Was born of the sea.
Nature gives a parting smile. As yet the blue-bells linger on the sod That copes the sheepfold ring; and in the woods A second blow of many flowers appears, Flowers faintly ting'd and breathing no perfume. But fruits, not blossoms, form …