George Orwell, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, April 1946:
I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and — to return to my first instance — toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.
Frogs in a pond, by Watanabe Shotei, late 19th-early 20th century