Quotes about nature and animals

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“Hindustan is a country which has few pleasures to recommend it…. Indians have no idea of the charms of friendly society, of frankly mixing together, or of familiar intercourse…. They have no horses, no good grapes, or musk melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food or bread in their bazaars, no bath or colleges, no candles, no torches, not a candle stick”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

First Mughal emperor Babur wrote in his autobiography Tuzk-e-Babri

“I made public the resolution to abstain from wine, which had been hidden in the treasury of my breast The victorious servants, in accordance with the illustrious order, dashed upon the earth of contempt and destruction the flagons and the cups, and the other utensils in gold and silver, which in their number and their brilliance were like the stars of the firmament They dashed them in pieces, as, God willing! soon will be dashed the gods of the idolaters, - and they distributed the fragments among the poor and needy.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, pp. 554-5. https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n623/mode/2up/search/dashed Also cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources

“In Painting, Yhou Have Unlimited Power. You Have The Ability To Move Mountains. You Can Bend Rivers. But When I Get Home, The Only Thing I Have Power Over Is The Garbage.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Source: From "The Joy of Painting" Mobquotes https://mobquotes.com/bob-ross-quotes/

“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

“If your head is wax, don't walk in the sun. ”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

“Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Source: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

“This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Message in Bombay (October 1922), p. 431.
Lord Meher (1986)
Context: This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination. In spite of so many discoveries, researches and scientific knowledge, the creation remains a great unsolved riddle.

“Hero is a misnomer. India is the only place left in the world where we call our stars heroes and heroines.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with David Light

“I can manage very well with the first grubby backside [of the model] which comes along – provided I find a skin which takes the light well.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 150 : a quote from Vollard's book

“I wanted to have a water jet in my garden: Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water to a reservoir, from where it should fall back through channels, finally spurting out in Sans Souci. My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a mouthful of water closer than fifty paces from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Je voulus faire un jet d’eau dans mon jardin; Euler calcula l’effort des roues pour faire monter l’eau dans un bassin, d’où elle devait retomber par des canaux, afin de jaillir à Sans-Souci. Mon moulin a été exécuté géométriquement, et il n’a pu élever une goutte d’eau à cinquante pas du bassin. Vanité des vanités! vanité de la géométrie!
Letter H 7434 from Frederick to Voltaire (1778-01-25)

“All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing.”

Hokusai (1760–1849) Japanese artist

On one of his pseudonom, Gyakyo Rojin. He may have said the above in his late life definitely, since he began to use the name Gwakyo Rojin in 1843.
Attributed

“What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 54
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

“.. When an individual, e. g. higher forms of animals, thinks, it is always for his own advantage whether the resulting action or expression is favorable or not to the onlookers or observers.”

Isidro A. T. Savillo (1959) Filipino biologist

The Overpowering Influence of the Environment to Gene Expression, Biologybrowser.org, 2002 http://biologybrowser.org/node/1154589,

“You are the universe. expressing itself as a human for a little while.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“Stars," she whispered. "I can see the stars again, my lady."
A tear trickled down Artemis's cheek. "Yes, my brave one. They are beautiful tonight."
Stars," Zoe repeated. Her eyes fixed on the night sky. And she did not move again.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.
Quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey, by Andrew Mango; "In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes [Atatürk], presumably in 1926-27", Grace Ellison Turkey Today (London: Hutchinson, 1928)

“My whole past life I live again in memory, and, involuntarily, I ask myself: 'why have I lived - for what purpose was I born?'… A purpose there must have been, and, surely, mine was an exalted destiny, because I feel that within my soul are powers immeasurable… But I was not able to discover that destiny, I allowed myself to be carried away by the allurements of passions, inane and ignoble. From their crucible I issued hard and cold as iron, but gone for ever was the glow of noble aspirations - the fairest flower of life. And, from that time forth, how often have I not played the part of an axe in the hands of fate! Like an implement of punishment, I have fallen upon the head of doomed victims, often without malice, always without pity… To none has my love brought happiness, because I have never sacrificed anything for the sake of those I have loved: for myself alone I have loved - for my own pleasure. I have only satisfied the strange craving of my heart, greedily draining their feelings, their tenderness, their joys, their sufferings - and I have never been able to sate myself. I am like one who, spent with hunger, falls asleep in exhaustion and sees before him sumptuous viands and sparkling wines; he devours with rapture the aerial gifts of the imagination, and his pains seem somewhat assuaged. Let him but awake: the vision vanishes - twofold hunger and despair remain!
And tomorrow, it may be, I shall die!… And there will not be left on earth one being who has understood me completely. Some will consider me worse, others, better, than I have been in reality… Some will say: 'he was a good fellow'; others: 'a villain.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

And both epithets will be false. After all this, is life worth the trouble? And yet we live - out of curiosity! We expect something new... How absurd, and yet how vexatious!
A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

“Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope and without love!..”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"The Demon" (1830)
Poems

“The Sun still shines.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

Die Sonne scheint noch. <br class="br">These were her last words as depicted in the film, Sophie Scholl - The Final Days (2005) http://www.sophieschollmovie.com/, which was heavily based on Gestapo documents that were in East German archives and not released until 1990. Her last words have also been reported as "God, you are my refuge into eternity" or sometimes "Your heads will fall as well" but there is dispute over whether Sophie or her brother Hans had said this. Hans' last words have been reported as having been Es lebe die Freiheit! ["Long Live Freedom!"] <br class="br">Disputed

“I just don’t quite understand it [the press], really. I don’t understand the animal. It’s a strange, roundabout way of selling something; it leaves a foul taste… The thing that fascinates me is: who cares what an actor thinks?”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Steven Daly, "The Maverick King," http://www.deppimpact.com/mags/transcripts/vanityfair_nov04.html Vanity Fair (November 2004)