An excerpt that I really enjoyed

From Walden by Henry David Thoreau:

"No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally , whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe , a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat ( γείβω , labor, lapsus , to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; γοβος , globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words,) externally a dry thin leaf , even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed,) with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb , the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils."

The outward beauty of nature should come as no surprise to us, given that it's a reflection or expression of deep, inner, inherent beauty that is present from the very beginning. I had to reread this passage several times to grasp its meaning (and I'm honestly still working on grasping it fully), but as soon as I came across it, something just clicked. Something about this passage "itches my brain" in a good way, and I keep coming back to it.