Nature never wears a mean appearance. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense of mind.

It is only when the mind and character slumber that dress can be seen.

To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible