Nature Quotes

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed."

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

"Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another."

"In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it."

"We talk of communing with Nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune... Nature furnishes the conditions - the solitude - and the soul furnishes the entertainment."

"He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature."

"As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents - electric wave motion - will have the sway."

"We can find Nature outside us only if we have first learned to know her within us. What is akin to her within us must be our guide. This marks out our path of enquiry."

"They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life."

"Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature."

"The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite? Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end."

"Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear."

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."

"Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies, and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space."

"There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature."

"To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language."

"To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else."

"Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?"

"Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished."

"The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?"

"What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on."

"Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle."

"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead."

"Who does not desire such a victory by which we shall join places in our Kingdom, so far divided by nature, and for which we shall set up trophies in another conquered world?"

"The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life."

"It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin."

"Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw."

"The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets."

"Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this."

"The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour."

"It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial."

"We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature."

"Nature never breaks her own laws."

"In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people."

"Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole."

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased."

"Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature."

"Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God."

"We now use the word 'nature' very much as our fathers used the word 'God.'"

"There is no doubt that breath control is the means for mind control because the mind, like breath, is a part of air; because the nature of mobility is common to both; because the place of origin is the same for both; and because when one of them is controlled, the other gets controlled."

"Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves."

"One of the great advantages of cremation - apart from all sanitary conditions - lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the material elements composing the physical and astral corpses, brought about by the burning."

"Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds."

"Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time."

"The communism of Karl Marx would probably be actually the best for everybody as a whole. But what he didn't figure into was human nature, and that's what corrupts it."

"A lot of ancient poetry sees in nature a reflection of human emotions, and in a post-industrialized era, once people have become more aware of the necessity of a more harmonious relation between man and nature, we need to build cities which can connect with human spiritual needs instead of being merely functional."

"It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins."

"Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself."

"It is reasonable that forces directed toward bodies depend on the nature and the quantity of matter of such bodies, as happens in the case of magnetic bodies."

"Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm."