Ok, everybody, time for me to ask some help of you once again. My company’s doing a “green initiative” project, where we brand our product as environmentally friendly and then try to milk the marketing for all it’s worth. (Cut us some slack, it’s not like every company in the US isn’t doing the exact same thing right now :)). Anyway, we’re putting up a new web site decorated with a variety of quotes on the subject, ranging from saving the environment to general sorts of pro-activism comments (all those variations on “the worst you can do is, thinking you can do little, to do nothing.”) I said, “Can I throw some Shakespeare in there?” and they said “Absolutely.” So that’s the challenge. I’m looking for Shakespeare quotes relative to the green/environmental movement. Can be either about the value of nature (and protecting it), or the larger picture of “its better to do something than nothing.” I am doing my own searching, not trying to get folks to do my homework for me :), but thought I’d see if anybody out there’s got some that come to mind. My Bartlett’s is at home, otherwise I’d start there.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
(Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3.)
If you tweak this, it might work…
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
I would not change it.
(As You Like It, 2.1)
In Act 3, Scene 4 (I think) of Richard II there’s a scene about gardening, but it probably isn’t exactly what you had in mind…
Thanks for the ideas! I actually found a nice flat laundry list (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_shakespeare.html) that I went quickly through, and managed to find both of those, Angela.
As a joke I also submitted “I shall make the trees my books”, but got shot down :).
Should really have used Lear on the heath as a warning against global warming.
And the song – ‘the rain it raineth every day’.
Romeo and Juliet is another secret Martian textual warning as to the results of excess greenhouse gassing – think of all that talk of hot streets.
Titania does a nice job too – ‘this is a result of our decent …we are their parents and originals’ (think about it).