An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON NATURE 1
Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719, British essayist, poet, statesman)
We are all manufacturers. Making good, making trouble, or making excuses.
H. V. Adolt
For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.
Paula Gunn Allen
We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.
Paula Gunn Allen
I am at two with nature.
Woody Allen (1935-, American director, screenwriter, actor, comedian)
The cistern contains: The fountain overflows.
William Blake (1757-1827, British poet, painter)
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
William Blake (1757-1827, British poet, painter)
Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion.
Lorraine Anderson (American photographer (specializing in wild flowers))
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."
Maya Angelou (1928-, African-American poet, writer, performer) Author's website: www.mayaangelou.com
The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918, Italian-born French poet, critic)
All men by nature desire to know.
Aristotle (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)
Nature does nothing uselessly.
Aristotle (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)
To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
Jane Austen (1775-1817, British novelist)
Nature is commanded by obeying her.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.
Hosea Ballou (1771-1852, American theologian, founder of "Universalism")
Art is man's nature: Nature is God's art.
Philip James Bailey (1816-1902, British poet)
As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The first four words ever uttered, Let there be light, constitute its charter. All nature is vibrant with its impulse.
Bruce Barton (1886-1967, American author, advertising expert)
Nature is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867, French poet)
Nature always tends to act in the simplest way.
Bernoulli (1687-1759, Swedish mathematician, engineer)
I look upon all creatures equally; none are less dear to me and none more dear. But those who worship me with love live in me, and I come to life in them.
Bhagavad Gita (c. BC 400-, Sanskrit poem incorporated into the Mahabharata)
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature.
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974, British scientist, author)
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682, British author, physician, philosopher)
Nature is the art of God.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682, British author, physician, philosopher)
Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of the earth and the life upon it, that I cannot think of heaven and the angels.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973, American novelist)
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
Warren Buffett (1930-, American investment entrepreneur)
Nature's law affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws, you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.
Luther Burbank (1849-1926, American horticulturist)
As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.
Lord Byron (1788-1824, British poet)
What law, what reason can deny that gift so sweet, so natural that God has given a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird?
Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681, Spanish playwright)
If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that all humanity does not suffice to assuage the thirst for blood, the path of destruction must lead to universal annihilation.
Albert Camus (1913-1960, French existential writer)
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant for peaceful sleep and meditative snores, to ceaseless din and mindless merriment and waste of shoes and floors.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898, British writer, mathematician)
The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964, American marine biologist, author)
Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse.
James Carswell
Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
George Washington Carver (1864-1943, American scientist)
That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.
Lydia M. Child (1802-1880, American abolitionist, writer, editor)
The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.
Noam Chomsky (1928-, American linguist, political activist)
By starving emotions, we become humorless, rigid and stereotyped. By repressing them, we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou. Encouraged, they perfume life; discouraged, they poison it.
Joseph Collins
Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God.
William Cowper (1731-1800, British poet)
A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
EE Cummings (1894-1962, American poet)
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519, Italian inventor, architect, painter, scientist, sculptor)
Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519, Italian inventor, architect, painter, scientist, sculptor)
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
Charles Darwin (1809-1882, British naturalist)
Nature, like us is sometimes caught without her diadem.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, American poet)
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784, French philosopher)
Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, British statesman, Prime Minister)
Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever.
Henry Van Dyke (1852--1933, American protestant clergyman and writer)
I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
Bob Dylan (1941-, American musician, singer, songwriter)
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
A man is related to all nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of hidden stuff.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
In a tavern everybody puts on airs except the landlord.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Nature: She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
To the dull mind, all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind, the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -- it's human.
Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466-1536, Dutch humanist)
All nature wears one universal grin.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754, British novelist, dramatist)
It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
Anatole France (1844-1924, French writer)
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
Anatole France (1844-1924, French writer)
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
Anne Frank (1929-1945, German Jewish refugee, diarist)
Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
Margaret Witter Fuller (1810-1850, American writer, lecturer)
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983, American inventor, designer, poet, philosopher)
Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exists in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object.
Henry Fuseli (1741-1825, Swiss-born British artist, critic)
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931, Lebanese poet, novelist)
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to that path which nature has marked out for him.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!
Emma Goldman (1869-1940, American anarchist)
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. There is a rapture on the lonely shore. There is society, where none intrudes. By the deep sea, and music in its roars; I love not man the less, but nature more.
George Noel Gordon
I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.
Alan Havhamess
We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830, British essayist)
Sympathy with nature is part of a good person's religion.
Francis Herbert Hedge (1846-1924, British philosopher)
The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962, German-born Swiss novelist, poet)
Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983, American author, philosopher)
You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she'll be constantly running back.
Horace (BC 65-8, Italian poet)
The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885, French poet, dramatist, novelist)
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.
P. D. James (1920-, British mystery writer)
If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.
Storm Jameson (1891-1986, British writer)
Nature never says one thing and wisdom another.
(Decimus Junius Juvenalis) Juvenal (c.55-c.130, Roman satirical poet)
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify -- so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
John Keats (1795-1821, British poet)
Cats . . . teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.
Garrison Keillor (1942-, American humorous writer, radio performer)
Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
Johannes Kepler
The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
Johannes Kepler
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
Paul Klee (1879-1940, Swiss artist)
Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.
Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970, American writer, critic, naturalist)
Even when a man acts ungrateful, it is often his benefactor who is more deserving of being labeled as disgraceful.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us truer and more perfect views than art could possibly make.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
Nothing is rarer than true good nature; those who are though to have it are usually just easily dominated, or weak.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
We are all murderers and prostitutes -- no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.
R. D. Laing (1927-1989, British psychiatrist)
Nature is not human hearted.
Lao-Tzu (BC 600-?, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism)
All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world, manifesting itself in such a degree and darting forth in such variety so much of its own nature.
William Law (American merchant)
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