Nature quotes
3.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside nature — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practiced, is of the same general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive."
"That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity; in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization"
"There is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity in Nature."
"The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in."
"I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the govenment of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed."
"As you love the Earth, so shall she love you."
"Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain."
"Our (the Stoic) motto, as you know, is live according to nature."
"The time will come when diligent research over periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden...Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memories of us will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has something for every age to investigate. nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all."
"But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man."
"We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction."
"We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world"
"Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it"
"Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man."
"In Nature everything has a meaning; that is, every object is exactly adapted to the place it occupies, and to the purpose for which it was made."
"Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred. But here is not a question of what's sacred; Rather of what to face or run away from. I'd hate to be a runaway from nature."
"For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery."
"For hard it is to keep from being King When it's in you and in the situation."
"There has never been a painting that was more beautiful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a human being."
"The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages."
