30 Iconic Shakespeare Quotes About Nature

Perhaps no writer had a better talent for capturing the beauty, power, and unpredictability of nature than William Shakespeare. His keen observation of the elements allowed him to weave the changing seasons, tempestuous storms, and serene landscapes into his works, adding depth to his characters and themes. Study up on some of his best with these 30 iconic Shakespeare quotes about nature.

Want more Shakespeare? Check out these 50 quotes about love, 30 quotes about life, and 30 quotes about death.

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18

There is so hot a summer in my bosom
That all my bowels crumble up to dust.
I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment, and against this fire
Do I shrink up.
King John, Act 5, Scene 7

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world
By their increase now knows not which is which.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1

My lovely Aaron, wherefore look’st thou sad,
When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
The birds chant melody on every bush,
The snakes lies rollèd in the cheerful sun,
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
And make a checkered shadow on the ground.
Titus Andronicus, Act 3, Scene 3

For when you’re stuck in traffic in July:
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1

What should we speak of
When we are old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how
In this our pinching cave shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene 3

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, Scene 1

When it’s so hot you can’t think straight:
The day is hot, and the weather,
and the wars, and the King, and the dukes.
Henry V, Act 3, Scene 2

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 3

You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south puffing with wind and rain?
As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 5

Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say
The gods themselves do weep!
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents
Where Cressid lay that night.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1

Stand thee close, then, under this penthouse,
for it drizzles rain, and I will,
like a true drunkard, utter all to thee.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 3

Your mistresses dare never come in rain,
For fear their colors should be washed away.
Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act 4, Scene 3

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows.
Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy.
The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, Scene 3

That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face.
King Lear, Act 4, Scene 

Another storm brewing;
I hear it sing i’ th’ wind. Yond same black
cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul
bombard that would shed his liquor. If it
should thunder as it did before, I know not
where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot
choose but fall by pailfuls.
The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 2

Why now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark!
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
Julius Caesar, Act 5, Scene 1

The ship is in her trim; the merry wind
Blows fair from land.
A Comedy of Errors, Act 4, Scene 1

I am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky;
betwixt the firmament and it,
you cannot thrust a bodkin’s point…
I would you did but see how it chafes,
how it rages, how it takes up the shore.
But that’s not to the point.
O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls!
Sometimes to see ’em, and not to see ’em.
Now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast,
and anon swallowed with yeast and froth,
as you’d thrust a cork into a hogshead.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 3, Scene 3

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude.
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

Purple violets and marigolds,
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave.
Pericles, Act 4, Scene 1

Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, ⟨drowned⟩ the cocks.
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head.
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2

I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds;
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.
Julius Caesar, At 1, Scene 3

Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never
Remember to have heard.
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2

Cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams.
Henry VI, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1

Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
‘This is no flattery. These are counselors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows,
But like of each thing that in season grows.
Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act 1, Scene 1