Nature Quotes

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Denis Diderot

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Hellen Kelle

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

Our The Stoic motto, as you know, is live according to nature.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.

Jane Austen, Emma

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

Samuel Smiles

Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.

Athenus

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Marcus Aureluis

Nature does not give to those who will not spend.

R. J. Baughan

Has not Nature proved, in giving us the strength necessary to submit them to our desires, that we have the right to do so?

Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcou

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language.... We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a common goal of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

I am at two with nature.

Woody Allen

Always begin anew with the day, just as nature does it is one of the sensible things that nature does.

George E. Woodbury

The wit makes fun of other persons the satirist makes fun of the world the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - - That is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

James Thurbe

All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.

Marie Curie

We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory shall swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of nature.

Abraham Lincoln

Everything is deemed possible except that which is impossible in the nature of things.

California Civil Code, "Object of a Contract".

Engineering is the practice of safe and economic application of the scientific laws governing the forces and materials of nature by means of organization, design and construction, for the general benefit of mankind.

S. E. Lindsay, 1920

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

Margaret Fulle

Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousands times worse than nothing.

Sydney Smith

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.... God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Pierre Charron

Many people believe they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.

William Ralph Inge

In the next year or so, my signature will appear on 60 billion of United States currency. More important to me, however, is the signature that appears on my life - The strong, proud, assertive handwriting of a loving father and mother.

Katherine D. Ortega

Man... is a tame or civilized animal never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized but if he be insufficiently or ill - Educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Plato

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.

Auguste Rodin

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Jean - Jacques Rousseau

What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing - - To live in accord with his nature.

Seneca

His life was gentle; and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!

William Shakespeare

Nature is the most thrifty thing in the world; she never wastes anything; she undergoes change, but there is no annihilation, the essence remains - Matter is eternal.

Horace Binney

The nature of men and women - Their essential nature - Is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

W. Somerset Maugham

Because it is the very nature of Imperialism to turn humans into beasts.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara

The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.

John F. Kennedy

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.

Samuel Johnson

People are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.

Edmund Spense

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better we find comfort somewhere.

Jane Austen

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality... the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Love is an image of God, and not a lifeless image, but the living essence of the divine nature which beams full of all goodness.

Martin Luthe