1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Friendship
“Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.”
John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby "An Essay on Poetry", line 2; cited from The Poetical Works of the Most Noble John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (Edinburg [sic]: Apollo Press, 1780) p. 281.
Misattributed in Temple Bar (February 1863) p. 377, and by Giga Quotes http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/authors/george_villiers_a001.htm.
Misattributed
“Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.”
Essay on Poetry (published 1723).
“The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature. ”
“A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.”
“Women are present as well as men in Shahnameh, the masterpiece of Ferdowsi.”
Outlooks
Source: Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2014 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/11919
“Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.”
“Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.”
“The Wealth of Nations may not be an original book, but it is unquestionably a masterpiece.”
Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter III, Adam Smith, p. 42
As quoted in "Epiphanies in Sepia and Umber" by Matthew Gurewitsch, in The Wall Street Journal, (15 March 2005)
Context: In the next 25 years, the human race will have to decide whether or not to preserve the bestiary of Nature’s living masterpieces. Ashes and Snow is not meant to tell people to do some things and not to do other things. It’s meant to inspire. I hope it’s not a requiem.
“That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.”
A Warning To My Readers.
Poems
Context: Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
