Beatrix Potter Quotes

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born. My brother and I were born in London...but our descent, our interest and our joy were in the north country'. Quoted in The Tale of Beatrix Potter a Biography by Margaret Lane, First Edition p 32-33

I think we get used to not seeing the green things around us. I think they become the backdrop of our lives. And I think you actively have to ask somebody to request that they put that in the foreground.

High Alpine meadows, like their near relatives prairie, desert and certain varieties of wetland, teach us to consider the world from a fresh perspective, to open our eyes and take account of what we have missed, reminding us that, in spite of our emphasis on the visual in everyday speech, we see so very little of the world.

I don't want my kids growing up to be city kids.

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.

See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.

I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.

In the end, for congenial sympathy, for poetry, for work, for original feeling and expression, for perfect companionship with one's friends--give me the country.

There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.

The cowslip is a country wench.

The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.

We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense.

I've learned over the years that geography is not that important, except that I seem to work better in the country than the city. I get more done. There's just less happening around me, and I have more time and concentration to work on music.

Even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the "things" of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. "We give our children guns and computer games," Wendy said. "They gave their children the land."

Nobody loves the light like the blind man.

It's something I passed on to my kids. They really love the earth because they've experienced it from the youngest age. They know where food comes from - it doesn't come from the Safeway bush or the Ralph's tree. It comes from the earth. And water and sunshine and nutrients. My children understand that because they've experienced it. I feel successful as a parent, having done that.

From the peak of Chimborazo (volcano) to the Pacific coast, from the Amazon rainforest to the Galapagos Islands, may you never lose the ability to thank God for what he has done and is doing for you, may you never lose the ability to protect what is small and simple, to care for your children and your elderly, to have confidence in the young, and to be constantly struck by the nobility of your people and the singular beauty of your country.

A life alert to simple pleasures, with perception cultivated and attuned to beauty, and a large capacity for friendship can serve us well come what may.

Everything matters terribly to children, you know, they're fresh and unformed.

The meanest flowret of the vale, / The simplest note that swells the gale, / The common sun, the air, and skies, / To him are opening paradise.

If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique.

I just love the world around me and wanted my audience to love and appreciate it too.

“It is not everyone,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”

I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the charms of pedestrianism, or our need as a people to cultivate the art. I think it would tend to soften the national manners, to teach us the meaning of leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to strengthen and foster the tie between the race and the land. No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through.