Quotes about nature
page 18

“Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. - Murray (WN 285)”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Source: White Noise: Text and Criticism

Universe

“When we pay attention to nature's music, we find that everything on the Earth contributes to its harmony.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Music

“Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: The Journals Of Anais Nin

“Dogs are a gift to mankind. They are happy and joyful and loyal by nature. They are pure, positive energy and teach by example. That is all that's required of them.”

Alyson Nöel book Radiance

Source: Radiance

Happiness, Dogs

“He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Unspecified edition, p. 225.
Source: On Beauty (2005)

“But there was more, as there always is when the love goes. She was haunted, naturally. Otherwise what is the point, why leave your rickety house, and why this yo-yo world giving us things and yanking them back?”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, World, Housing

“In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Beauty, Way, Tree, Perfection

“The study of truth requires a considerable effort - which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge - despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Source: Summa Contra Gentiles

Love, Men, God, Truth

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Life, Men, Children

“Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary…”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

Drink, Wine

“But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

Art

“I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Wisdom, Beauty, Past, Future

“Besides, you're a cat. It's your nature to think you're the center of the universe.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Cats, Thinking, Universe

“Pregnancy humbles husbands. After an initial rush of male pride they quickly recognise the minor role that nature had assigned them in the drama of reproduction.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

“The leaves let go, the seeds let go, and I must let go sometimes, too, and cast my lot with another of nature’s imperfect but tenacious survivors.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

People

“She had perfect features, with her eye, nose, lips, and ears the right size and in right places. That is all it takes to make people beautiful, normal body parts – yet why does nature mess it up so many times?”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

People, Beauty, Time, Parting

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Understanding, Wise, Deep, Beauty

“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique

Love

“Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.”

Beverly Cleary book The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Source: The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Love, Boy, Understanding

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

People, Understanding, Knowledge, Envy

“I am at two with nature.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful… How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural--you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Life, Smile, Suffering

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air — moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh — felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Secret

“Every name is real. That's the nature of names.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. it's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests he did not create a single leaf the same as another.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

God, World, Law

“When it comes down to it, even on the natural plane, it is much happier and more enlivening to love than to be loved.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love

“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Food, Box, Season

“Nature is God's first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times…
If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God, Star, Spring, Time

“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Leadership

“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Of Studies
Essays (1625)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon

Men, History, Mathematics

“… the way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world. Daily, our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds.”

Michael Pollan book The Omnivore's Dilemma

Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

World, Way

“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,” said Grumman. “We have to learn everything we do.”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

Learning

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”

Ted Chiang (1967) American science fiction writer

Question, Thinking, Reality, Science

“Plus he was naturally lucky at cards. As Mam had always said, lucky at cards, or lucky at life. One or the other. Not both.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

Life

“Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Women, Secret

“The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Way, Mountain, Fight

“If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you'll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Understanding

“After the group vet appointment--during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room--we went back to Sabrina's and re-released the cats to their natural habitat.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Cats, Business, Waiting

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

“Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Love, Fools, Way, Thinking

“The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

World, Strong, Parting

“All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before—but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Change

“Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

"Sisterhood" in New York Magazine (20 December 1971), p. 49

“Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.”
Opinionis enim commenta delet dies, naturae iudicia confirmat.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)
Variant: For time destroys the fictions of error and opinion, while it confirms the determinations of nature and of truth.
Book II, section 2; translation by Francis Brooks
Variant: Time destroys the figments of the imagination, while confirming the judgments of nature.

Decision, Time

“Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Love, Art, Way, Understanding

“Someday you'll find someone special again. People who've been in love once usually do. It's in their nature.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, People

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness."

-Edward Ferrars”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

“Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 38, Escape

Love, Truth

“Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back Into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life

Sense, Dependency

“Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

“When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don't belong.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

“Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

Disease, Law

“Haymich finally drops the good-natured act. "you know who else, Katniss. You know who stepped up first."
Of course I do.
Gale.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

People, Way

“Participating in Society in not a thing one can do naturally; one has to rehearse for it.”

Michel Faber book The Crimson Petal and the White

Source: The Crimson Petal and the White

“Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority I just don't know what I'll do with you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.”

Piers Anthony (1934) English-American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres

Thinking

“It's taken me years of practice to learn how to act natural.”

Craig Clevenger The Contortionist's Handbook

Source: The Contortionist's Handbook

Learning

“Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

Hell

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

People, Law

“Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most?
That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost?
That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain?
That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Pain, Suffering, Christ

“Beauty comes naturally, but it's hard to be stunning by accident.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Beauty

“Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.”

John Dewey book Reconstruction in Philosophy

Source: Reconstruction in Philosophy

Lie, Law

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake. Like on the seventh day God looked down, "There it is. My Creation, perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest. [Gives shocked expression] Oh my Me! I left fuckin' pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day. Hehe, that was the day I created the possum. Still gives me a chuckle. But if I leave pot everywhere, that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to … use it. Now I have to create Republicans."”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

" … and God wept", I believe is the next part of that story.
Chicago '91 (1991)

God, People, Law, Way

“The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him… [from Macbeth]”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“Disaster is a natural part of my evolution toward tragedy and dissolution.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Parting

“Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Women, Disappointment, Parent

“Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

“I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural.. to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Hate, Fear, Jealousy, Envy

“Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.”

James Gleick book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

History

“We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

World

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III
Source: Montaigne: Essays

Business, Chance

“To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are blessed with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you; nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a "Natural Man."”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Part 2: The Mystique of Enlightenment
The Mystique of Enlightenment (1982)
Source: The Mystique of Enlightenment: The Radical Ideas of U.G. Krishnamurti

Way, Intelligence

“I comfort myself with the reflection that your wife will possibly be able to curb your desire--I admit, a natural one for the most part--to exterminate your fellows.”

Georgette Heyer book Devil's Cub

Source: Devil's Cub

Parting

“Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Origin of Species

“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Beauty, Beauty

“There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

World, Color, Change

“So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”

Margaret George book The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Source: The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Learning, Perfection, Night

“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

"Bright Star" (1819)
Context: Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.

Art, Star, Night