Nature Quotes

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

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

Margaret Fulle

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 1: Economy

But words came halting forth, wanting Inventions stayInvention, Natures child, fled step - Dame Studys blows... Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, Fool, said my Muse to me look in thy heart and write.

Sir Philip Sidney

Nature never did betray The heart that loved her.

William Wordsworth

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

Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

Denis Diderot

The artist, depicting man disdainful of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature and Humanity, rejoices in its measureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows.

Berenson

To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.

Carl Jung

All art is but imitation of nature.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Aristotle, Parts of Animals

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Aristotle

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes, Exemplary Novels (1613)

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Plato

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

Ingrid Bergman

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate their subject matters.

B. F. Skinne

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore.

Henry Ward Beeche

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

John Davidson Rockefeller, Sr.

Nature herself makes the wise man rich.

Cicero

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.

Dietrich Bonhoeffe

The experience to be gathered from books, Though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning Whereas the experience gained from actual life, Is of the nature of wisdom And a small store of the latter Is worth vastly more than a stock of the former.

Samuel Smiles

To be a well - Flavored man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature.

William Shakespeare

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Helen Kelle

Nature is just enough but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell

A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Joseph Addison

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that eve.

Galileo Galilei

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms, Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.

Auguste Rodin

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

E. B. White

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque revenit. You may drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will nevertheless come back.

Horace

Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.

Bellamy Brooks

Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life. Too many of us divide and dissipate our energies in debating actions which should be taken for granted.

Ralph W. Sockman