NATURE

Related Subjects: Animal, Birds, Country, Forest, Garden, Grass, Instinct, Mountains, Tree

1. Nature will out.—AESOP, The Cat-Maiden
   

2. Nature is thought immersed in matter.—BRONSON ALCOTT, Sonnet to Louisa May Alcott
   

3. Rich with the spoils of Nature.—SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici
   

4. Nature is the art of God.—SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Mediri
   

5. To him who in the love of Nature holds
   Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
   A various language.—BRYANT, Thanatopsis
   

6. Go forth, under the open sky, and list
   To Nature's teachings.—BRYANT, Thanatopsis
   

7. Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
   I'm on your list.—BURNS, First Epistle to J. Lapraik
   

8. When Nature her great masterpiece design'd,
   And fram'd her last, best work, the human mind,
   Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,
   She form'd of various stuff the various Man.—BURNS, To Robert Graham

9. Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.—JOHN BURROUGHS, Time and Change
   

10. How often we forget all time, when lone,
    Admiring Nature's universal throne,
    Her woods her wilds, her waters, the intense
    Reply of hers to our intelligence.—BYRON, The Island
    

11. And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.—THOMAS CAMPBELL, Pleasures of Hope
    

12. Nature, the vicaire of th' almyghty lorde.—CHAUCER, The Parlement of Foules
    

13. It is agayns the proces of nature.—CHAUCER, Canterbury Tales
    

14. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank.—JOSEPH CONRAD, Typhoon
    

15. Nature, that is the seal to mortal wax.—DANTE, Purgatory
    

16. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.—DARWIN, The Origin of Species
    

17. For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.—DRYDEN, The Cock and the Fox
    

18. He needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.—DRYDEN, Essay of Dramatic Poesy
    

19. Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
    Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?—EMERSON, Forbearance
    

20. Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
    And all their botany is Latin names.—EMERSON, Blight
    

21. Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.—EMERSON, History
    

22. Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.—EMERSON, Compensation
    

23. What is natural is never disgraceful.—EURIPIDES
    

24. For Nature forms, and softens us within,
    And writes our fortune's changes in our face.—HORACE, Ars Poetica
    

25. You may drive out nature with a fork, yet still she will return.—HORACE, Epistles
    

26. "Nature" will no longer do the work unaided. Nature—if by that we mean blind and non-conscious forces—has, marvellously, produced man and consciousness; they must carry on the task to new results which she alone can never reach.—JULIAN HUXLEY, Essays of a Biologist
    

27. To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea­side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.—THOMAS H. HUXLEY
    

28. There remains no reason for supposing that the present laws were specially selected in order to produce life. They are just as likely, for instance, to have been selected in order to produce magnetism or radio-activity—indeed more likely, since to all appearances physics plays an incomparably greater part in the universe than biology.—SIR JAMES JEANS, The Mysterious Universe

29. So Nature deals with us, and takes away
    Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
    Leads us to rest.—LONGFELLOW, Nature
    

30. In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.—MILTON, Tractate of Education

31. Accuse not Nature! she hath done her part;
    Do thou but thine!—MILTON, Paradise Lost

32. Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better un­derstands her own affairs than we.—MONTAIGNE, Essays

33. Living Nature, not dull Art
    Shall plan my ways and rule my heart.—CARDINAL NEWMAN, Nature and Art

34. All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
    All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see.—POPE, Essay on Man

35. Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
    And catch the manners living as they rise;
    Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
    But vindicate the ways of God to man.—POPE, Essay on Man

36. All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
    Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.—POPE, Essay on Man

37. Nature is beyond all teaching.—Proverb

38. Nature must obey necessity.—Proverb

39. Nature passes nurture.—Proverb

40. He that follows nature is never out of his way.—Proverb

41. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.—SHAKESPEARE, Coriolanus

42. There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could
    find it out.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

43. Nature her custom holds,
    Let shame say what it will.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

44. Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth
    In strange eruptions.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV

45. Nature's above art in that respect.—SHAKESPEARE, King Lear

46. Now, by two-headed Janus,
    Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
    

47. Framed in the prodigality of nature.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard III
    

48. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.—SHAKESPEARE, Troilus and Cressida
    

49. This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.—BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
    

50. Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.—SHERIDAN, The Critic
    

51. Do you realize what it is that is causing world chaos? ... it's Nature hitting back. Not with the old weapons—floods, plagues, holocausts. We can neutralize them. She's fighting back with strange instruments called neuroses. She's deliberately afflicting mankind with the jitters. Nature is proving that she can't be beaten—not by the likes of us. She's taking the world away from the intellectuals and giving it back to the apes.—ROBERT E. SHERWOOD, The Petrified Forest
    

52. Nature abhors a vacuum.—SPINOZA, Ethics
    

53. I warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.—SPINOZA
    

54. So, naturalists observe, a flea
    Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
    And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
    And so proceed ad infinitum.—SWIFT, On Poetry
    

55. By acting on nature outside himself, and changing it
    Man simultaneously changes his own nature.—GENEVIEVE TAGGARD
    

56. So careful of the type she seems.
    So careless of the single life.—TENNYSON, In Memoriam
    

57. There is a fundamental tendency in the stones and mortar of Nature to grow from more to more—atoms building up molecules, molecules uniting in micellae, these forming higher units or wholes, and so on.—SIR ARTHUR THOMSON, The Beauty of Nature
    

58. Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
    Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?—JAMES THOMSON, The Seasons
    

59. Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
    For God hath made them so;
    Let bears and lions growl and fight,
    For 'tis their nature too.—ISAAC WAATS, Divine Songs
    

60. After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains.—WALT WHITMAN, Specimen Days

61. You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water­craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness-perhaps ignorance, credulity-helps your enjoyment of these things.—WALT WHITMAN, Specimen Days
    

62. Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.—WHITTIER, To Charles Sumner
    

63. Thou unassuming commonplace
    Of Nature.—WORDSWORTH, To the Daisy
    

64. Come forth into the light of things,
    Let Nature be your teacher.—WORDSWORTH, The Tables Turned
    

65. Knowing that Nature never did betray
    The heart that loved her.—WORDSWORTH
    

66. The course of Nature is the art of God.—EDWARD YOUNG, Night Thoughts