Quotes About Nature

Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.

By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it, in his love of justice.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas's mind from his peculiar structure. I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. That is the build of the man, and consequently he looks upon the matter of slavery in this unimportant light.

Abruptly, another section of ice front calved off the glacier about half a mile south, collapsing in house-sized blue chunks at its base and throwing up a cloud of ice shards. Chen started violently, and Faraday covered his ears against the roar. Marshall grimaced as he felt the mountain shudder beneath his feet.

Leaving Inishmore' by Michael Longley, from Selected Poems (1998, p.22). What

His uncaring mother did not alert him to the intrinsic nature of maternal love. It was keen as it was strong, and it's memory razor sharp.

Life is a river that never stops flowing. You can dam it, you can harness its power, you can poison it, but you can't stop it. A river never ends. It changes course and cuts through the land. It floods and damages and kills. It can be weakened by drought. But it never stops. It is the fundamental giver of life.

summer ends and autumn begins. The trees retract their sap in a hurry and the resulting bright colours must be a panic-stricken response to the sudden withdrawal of that life-blood. Because the sight's so beautiful, you forget what this gorgeous display actually represents. Decay and death. If only human death were so glorious.

Partial truth - the seeds of wisdom- can be found in many places. In primal instinct may partial truth be found ... in earthly law, social custom, scientific research, philosophy and religious doctrine. The seeds of wisdom are contained in all scriptures ever written ... especially in art, music and poetry ... and, above all, in Nature.

spring did seem to come to this part of London earlier than to other, rougher neighbourhoods, the cherry-blossom anticipated warmer weather, as if the rich were owed nicer seasons.

I watch a bird as it brings food to its chicks. How it looks after them, how it protects them. And then I say to myself, "You're a better mother than me" ' Hatidza Mehmedovic, mother of two sons murdered at Srebrenica

People have this ridiculous notion that we and animals are somehow on the same level. I blame Disney films. I blame them for a lot of things.

Kept Burning and Distant" You return when you feel like it, like rain. And like rain you are tender, with the rain's inept tenderness. A passion so general I could be anywhere. You carry me out into the wet air. You lay me down on the leaves and the strong thing is not the sex, But waking up alone under the tress after.

The thing we are trying to say is in the language of leaves.

There were times when the light of the moon had gone out and she felt a great loneliness. It wasn't for herself. It was for what had happened to the grasses of their land, their waters, not just the massacre there, the slavery, but the killing of the ocean.

Remembering place is significant, and that includes each visitor to a place, insect, plant, animal, or the passing shadow of a cloud in golden sunlight.

A bird killed in the name of human power is in truth a loss of power from the world, not an addition to it.

This is what happens to fire. It consumes itself.

the important question is not whether all rocks are alive but whether specific humans relate appropriately (respectfully) with specific rocks

He wakes up and he is not a halfhearted man and he can't remember why he wakes this way, except that he hears the sound of birds and it is as if behind the human world something else is taking place. The

Walking by Stolen Creek the meaning of its name forgotten, the word remembered. Whatever happened here is recalled in another time and it's remembered inside the stolen self that my blood river passes through in thin and beautiful veins, not gold but only a mere human heartbeat, a circle of people standing, talking, making their plans as water passes by. Something, someone is still alive, telling. They think these are only stories not what holds the world together in its balance.

Hungry, we are hungry for the whole world. We are like the small fish in the sea, the ones who swim into the mouths of larger ones to take what's there.