It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
Even though the genius of man might make various inventions, attaining the same end by various means, it will not invent anything more beautiful, or more economical, or more direct than nature, for in nature’s inventions nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous.
A bird is an instrument working according to a mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce, with all its movements.