Quotes
Quotes about Nature
The scupltor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.
In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature.
Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'
God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature or do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to outdo the life: Oh, could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face, the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass; But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book.
Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use. -Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 1.
The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death. -Measure for Measure. Act iii. Sc. 1.
To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. -Much Ado about Nothing. Act iii. Sc. 3.
Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. -The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.
'T is beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on: Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy. -Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 5.
Her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat; Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe That all was lost.
. . . it is the very nature of sin to prevent man from meditating on spiritual things. . .
What means this heaviness that hangs upon me? This lethargy that creeps through all my senses? Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care, Sinks down to rest.
Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.
When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.
Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability- except the order of a dead universe filled with a uniformly distributed gas.
The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. This psychological urge to belong, to participate, to commune is as primary and real as its opposite. The all-important question is the nature of that higher entity of which the individual feels himself a part.
Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.
Civilized man has always had a great inclination to read his conceptions and feelings into the mind of primitive man; but he has only a limited capacity for understanding the latter's undeveloped mental life and for interpreting, as it were, his nature.
The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of a mass movement unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice.
