Quotes About Nature

Whatever we most admire and look up to—God, the truths of mathematics, the laws of nature—is endowed with an existence that transcends time. We act inside time but judge our actions by timeless standards. As a result of this paradox, we live in a state of alienation from what we most value. This alienation affects every one of our aspirations.

So we may now pose a question which could be answered only if we have a quantum theory of gravity. What is the nature of the information trapped in a quantum black hole? Keep this in mind as we go ahead and explore the different approaches to quantum gravity, for a good test of a theory of quantum gravity is how well it is able to answer this question.

Once long ago in Wisconsin I saw the heavens draped in rich purple auroral clouds fringed and folded in most magnificent forms; but in this glory of light, so pure, so bright, so enthusiastic in motion, there was nothing in the least cloudlike.

Cruelty is not taught. It is as certain as a compass point. One can be instructed in the specifics of cruelty, like one can be taught to use a spoon, a knife, a fork, but even without these skills a man will still eat. The need is with us.

The priest's deep brown eyes reminded Nicky of the bayou: light reflected on their surface, but dark things moved beneath.

One under a tree, one under a bush, one under the water.

Dogs have hair. Cats, fur. Dogs whine, yip, howl, bark. Cats purrr. I say: No contest.

Life is the tamer of the wild beast of humanity.

All things bend to help the man Who seeks to harmonize His own free will with nature's plan, And prove himself most wise.

In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times.

We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things.

For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist.

When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.

It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.

I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.

Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week--a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards.

We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day.

When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass.

Colors are the smiles of nature.

Saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.

Both the Pollyannas and the Cassandras are wrong, and both stand in the way of social justice, the former by condemning us all to catastrophic climate change and the loss of other vital ecosystem services for the sake of profit; the latter by condemning us all to a hair-shirted existence and refusal of further human development due to a romantic, unscientific belief in a static, unchanging balance of nature.

Mother Nature is not beneficent. She is not maleficent either of course. Merely augustly, majestically capricious.

One of the most important popular concepts that we do have to ditch is the idea that there is some natural balance that mankind is intruding upon as a result of our growth.