How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Margaret used to tramp along by her father's side, crushing down the fern with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her light foot, and send up the fragrance peculiar to it […] reveling in the sunshine, and the herbs and flowers it called forth. (1.2.5)
Margaret loves the sweet fragrances and warm feeling of nature. There's something sinister, though, in the way she crushes flowers with "cruel glee." The phrasing suggests that even though Margaret loves nature, she loves it as something she can use in whatever way gives her pleasure.
Quote #2
[With] the soft violence of the west wind behind her, as she crossed some heath, she seemed to be borne onwards, as lightly and easily as the fallen leaf that was wafted along by the autumnal breeze. (1.2.14)
Margaret feels totally at peace with nature, even though nature sometimes pushes her with "soft violence." Letting nature take control makes Margaret feel like she's nothing more than a falling leaf, which is a welcome alternative to all the responsibility she has around the Hale house.
Quote #3
On such evenings Margaret was apt to stop talking rather abruptly, and listen to the drip-drip of the rain upon the leads of the little bow-window. (1.2.15)
Margaret usually thinks deeply about what she says. But nature has a way of silencing her and making her meditate on its beauty. In this case, Margaret stops talking suddenly to listen to the rain dripping on her window. She's a proud woman, but she can't resist nature's charms.
Quote #4
Here and there a great oblong many-windowed factory stood up, like a hen among her chickens, puffing out black 'unparliamentary' smoke, and sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had taken to foretell rain. (1.7.4)
In the town of Milton, industry replaces nature. What appears to be a rain cloud is in fact the smoke pouring out of a factory's smokestacks. Yuck. We don't blame Margaret for being disappointed.
Quote #5
"Get the doctor to order it for her. Tell him that it's the smoke of Milton that does her harm." (2.4.2)
Mrs. Hale's health doesn't fare too well in the smoky streets of Milton. To be fair, she was never that healthy to begin with. But having no access to fresh air definitely seems to play a role in her eventual death.
Quote #6
"But people must live in towns. And in the country some get such stagnant habits of mind that they are almost fatalists." (2.12.6)
Mr. Hale admits that the natural beauty of Helstone village is preferable to the smoky streets of Milton. But at the same time, he admits that people need to live in towns sometimes. Besides, he also knows that many people in rural areas become too set in their ways because they don't see enough different people, no matter how beautiful their surroundings might be.
Quote #7
"I go there every four or five years—and I was born there—yet I do assure you, I often lose my way—aye, among the very piles of warehouses that are built upon my father's orchard." (2.19.64)
Mr. Bell assures us that his hometown of Milton used to be a place of farmer's fields and frolicking deer. But now when he goes home, he can barely recognize the place anymore because factories are built over the spot where his father's orchard used to be. Is that progress or is that destruction? Your call, Shmooper.
Quote #8
Over babbling brooks they took impossible leaps, which seemed to keep them whole days suspended in the air. (2.20.1)
Good ol' Helstone is just as Margaret left it. The only problem is that she's not the same person she was when she first moved to Milton. She no longer has the innocent outlook on life that she did when she was living in the natural wonder of Helstone. Now she's seen a different side to the world and a different side to humanity, and she needs to figure out a new way of approaching the world.
Quote #9
It hurt her to see Helstone road so flooded in the sun-light, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years. Nature felt no change, and was ever young. (2.21.1)
Margaret is pained by the thought that nature never changes, because it makes her realize just how sad it is that people get older and die (like her parents). Margaret has to deal with a lot of death in this book, and it's hard to face death when nature seems to be so unchanging and happy all the time.
Quote #10
Before they left Margaret stole round to the back of the Vicarage garden, and gathered a little straggling piece of honeysuckle. (2.21.125)
Margaret is ready to leave Helstone—maybe for the last time. But she makes sure to take a piece of honeysuckle as a keepsake. She's not as interested in her old house as she is in the natural world around Helstone. The piece of honeysuckle was no doubt growing there when her parents were still alive, and it symbolizes a happier time.