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Quotations about nature

Marcus AureliusObserve always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.

 - Marcus Aurelius

Tags:   change  nature  

David HumeWhere am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

 - David Hume

Tags:   distraction  nature  philosophy  purpose  

Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.

 - Calvin Coolidge

Tags:   law  nature  rights  

Edward AbbeyIt is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

 - Edward Abbey

Tags:   exploration  nature  pleasure  recreation  

John MuirHow lavish is Nature, building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.

 - John Muir

Tags:   change  creation  nature  renewal  

John MuirNothing goes unrecorded. Every word of leaf and snowflake and particle of dew . . . as well as earthquake and avalanche, is written down in Nature's book.

 - John Muir

Tags:   history  Nature  

Isaac NewtonTo explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

 - Isaac Newton

Tags:   certainty  nature  research  science  

Diane AckermanWhen I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization.

 - Diane Ackerman

Tags:   biking  civilization  nature  

Leo TolstoyA quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness.

 - Leo Tolstoy

Tags:   country  happiness  nature  neighbors  pleasure  rest  

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. - John Milton

 - John Milton

Tags:   nature  spring  vernal  

Richard FeynmanFor a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

 - Richard Feynman

Tags:   nature  technology  

Richard FeynmanTo those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty of nature. . . . If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.

 - Richard Feynman

Tags:   beauty  language  mathematics  nature  

Charles DickensMen talk of nature as an abstract thing, and lose sight of what is natural while they do so.

 - Charles Dickens

Tags:   abstract  nature  

AristotleThat man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech.

 - Aristotle

Tags:   nature  politics  speech  

Ralph Waldo EmersonNature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and at the same time she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tags:   animals  laws  nature  

Animals in nature, contrary to the suspicions of cynics or the hopes of idealists, are neither intrinsically vicious nor altruistic. Competition and cooperation are both nature's ways.

 - Stephen Jay Gould

Tags:   altruism  animals  competition  nature  

. . . birds will appeal most strongly to us through their songs. When your ears are attuned to the music of birds, your world will be transformed. Birds' songs are the most eloquent of Natures' voices.

 - Frank M. Chapman

Tags:   animals  birds  music  nature  songs  

Robert HeinleinButterflies are not insects. . .they are self-propelled flowers.

 - Robert A. Heinlein

Tags:   flowers  insects  nature  

Oscar WildeIf Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.

 - Oscar Wilde

Tags:   architecture  comfort  nature  

Frank Lloyd WrightBring out the nature of the materials, let their nature intimately into your scheme. . .Reveal the nature of the wood, plaster, brick or stone in your designs: they are all by nature friendly and beautiful.

 - Frank Lloyd Wright

Tags:   architecture  design  materials  nature  

Marie CurieI am among those who think that science has great beauty. . .a scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician but also a child placed in front of natural phenomena which impresses him like a fairy tale.

 - Marie Curie

Tags:   beauty  laboratory  nature  science  

Leonardo da VinciEven 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.

 - Leonardo da Vinci

Tags:   beauty  invention  nature  

The profession I'm part of has, as its whole purpose, the rendering of the physical world understandable and beautiful. Without this you have only tables and statistics.

 - James Oppenheimer

Tags:   beauty  nature  science  

David HumeArt may make a suit of clothes; but nature must produce a man.

 - David Hume

Tags:   art  nature  

David HumeIt is a great mortification to the vanity of man that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of Nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the underworkman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces which come from the hand of the master.

 - David Hume

Tags:   art  beauty  nature  value  

Michel de MontaigneHe that had never seen a river imagined the first he met with to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   extremes  nature  

Michel de MontaigneIt is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   death  life  nature  

Michel de MontaigneNature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone, and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   entertainment  nature  recreation  solitude  

Michel de MontaigneThe laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   conscience  customs  nature  

Albert EinsteinThe most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious -- the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with the awareness of -- and glimpse into -- the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

 - Albert Einstein

Tags:   God  mystery  nature  

Aldous HuxleyConsistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.

 - Aldous Huxley

Tags:   change  consistency  nature  

Leonardo da VinciI roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.

 - Leonardo da Vinci

Tags:   curiosity  inquiry  nature  questions  

Charles DarwinThus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

 - Charles Darwin

Tags:   evolution  life  nature  species  

Henry David ThoreauI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.

 - Henry David Thoreau

Tags:   life  nature