quotations about nature
Despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn't care one whit about us. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Our Lonely Home in Nature", The New York Times, May 2, 2014
The man or woman that sees no beauty in surrounding nature has a soul that sleeps.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Endless Beauty in Nature", Short Essays
Nature is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, August 26, 1710
Mid-summer ... when the alchemy of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Tomb"
Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!
BERTOLT BRECHT
The Exception and the Rule
As an authoress Nature is open to criticism, for her Book hath neither beginning, middle, nor end.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
Nature admits no lie.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Latter-Day Pamphlets
Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
remark made during Einstein's visit to Princeton University, May 1921
All nature ... is a respiration
Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter
Will inhale it into his bosom again,
So that nothing but God alone will remain.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Golden Legend
You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.
HORACE
Epistles
The volume of Nature is the book of knowledge.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Citizen of the World
It were happy if we studied Nature more in natural things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
What people call defying nature is usually no more than human beings trying to stop its most harmful effects. This is not hubris, but a justified attempt to reduce suffering and improve the conditions for human life. It is why people put roofs on their homes, purify their water, or use mechanical transport to shrink the otherwise limiting aspects of distance. No one would object to these things, but still many have a sense that sometimes we go too far. But what is too far? It is surely not a matter of technological sophistication. An elaborate technology that cured cancer, for instance, would be welcomed, not rejected for being excessively artificial.
JULIAN BAGGINI
"Nature is not evil, simply amoral", The Independent, March 14, 2011
Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible.
JEROME K. JEROME
"Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad"
Nature is astonishingly prolific, but it is a prodigal process going nowhere special, sponsored by destruction and suffering. What is wonderful and inspiring is the possibility of infinite variation and exquisite adaptation; what is daunting and terrible is the cost. Nature is abundant and unremittingly cruel from, as it were, a personal point of view.
ADAM PHILLIPS
Darwin's Worms On Life Stories and Death Stories
Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
Nature abhors a vacuum.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
The Forsyte Saga
If in studying the works and laws of Nature, we are walking with its great Author and Sustainer, then we behold this department of truth as He beholds it; we recognize the order of nature and the relations of cause and effect as He recognizes them, and the whole tendency of this must be to bring our minds into grateful harmony with His.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
All nature is full of God. He is enthroned in Light: he creates darkness: he hath his way in the whirlwind, fendeth abroad his lightnings, giveth snow like wool, scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes, and casteth forth his ice like morsels! Who can stand before his cold? Who can thunder with a voice like God? It is He who distils the rain from his bottles, who opens the bubbling fountains, who covers the fields with grass, and the hills with flocks, who spins out the fleecy air, and spreads forth the liquid plains, who refreshes us with his wings, lights us with the sun, and entertains us with his table, richly furnish'd with all the dainty of heaven.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine