Quotes
Quotes about Nature
But who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
Whoe'er amidst the sons
Of reason, valour, liberty, and virtue
Displays distinguish'd merit, is a noble
Of Nature's own creating.
All Nature wears one universal grin.
Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an access of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
Here lies James Quinn. Deign, reader, to be taught,
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In Nature's happiest mould however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last.
Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part;
Nature in him was almost lost in Art.
The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n Nature warm,
The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.
"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
Happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Nature, exerting an unwearied power,
Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;
Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads
The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.
Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
The tone of languid nature.
Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Auld Nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O;
Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O!
To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever;
For Nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!
His [Burke's] imperial fancy has laid all Nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art.
He [Kippis] might be a very clever man by nature for aught I know, but he laid so many books upon his head that his brains could not move.
Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.
As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die!
