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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker notes that studying nature ultimately reveals only oneself.
In plain terms
When I study nature I only find myself.
What can you take from it?
External exploration often mirrors internal self.

Where it applies

  • study
  • solitude
  • philosophy

Putting it to work

  • turn outward inquiry inward
  • know yourself

Questions to consider

  • What do you find when you look outward?
  • How does nature reflect you?

Another view

It may undervalue objective study of nature.

More from Gerard Manley Hopkins

  1. I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.

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  2. I consider my selfbeing ... that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctiv…

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  3. When I compare myself, my being-myself, with anything else whatever, all things alike, all in the same degree, rebuff me with blank unlikeness.

    Permalink to quote #71

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