“To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
VII, 11
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII
9
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I
“To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
VII, 11
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII
“Among all the studies of natural causes and reasons, light most delights the contemplators”
John Peckham (1227–1292) Archbishop of Canterbury
Perspectiva communis, translated by, and appearing in the notebooks (C.A.<sub>543r</sub>) of Leonardo da Vinci, as quoted by Martin Kemp, Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (2006) p. 112.
Context: Among all the studies of natural causes and reasons, light most delights the contemplators; among the great things of mathematics, the certainty of its demonstrations most illustriously elevates the minds of its investigators; perspective must therefore be preferred to all human discourses and disciplines, in the study in which radiant lines are expounded by means of demonstrations and in which the glory is found not only of mathematics, but also physics: it is adorned with the flowers of one and the other.
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana
“The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature.”
Oscar Wilde book Intentions
What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
Intentions (1891)
Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer
As quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 39; also in The Missing Jesus: Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament (2003) by Craig Alan Evans, Carl A. Elliott, Bruce Chilton, Jacob Neusner
General sources
“Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.”
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 246.
Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason
Preface to 2nd edition, Tr. F. Max Müller (1905)
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)