Quotes About Nature

Nature [provides] with the excitement of the dance in the interest of the reproduction of the species.

Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

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.

The day, water, sun, moon, night - I do not have to purchase these things with money.

Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues. ("Puppies and pigs have a very different smell.")

There is always something new out of Africa.

Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.

It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.

There is, to be sure, no evil without something good.

we rest not contented with natural poisons, but betake ourselves to many mixtures and compositions artificial, made even with our own hands. But what say you to this? Are not men themselves mere poisons by nature? For these slanderers and backbiters in the world, what do they else but launch poison out of their black tongues, like hideous serpents?

But, if I were given my choice, I prefer the speech like the winter snows.

So when you 3 go hunting you can adopt my advice, and carry your tablets as well as your food-basket and flask, for you will find that Minerva roams the mountains no less than Diana.

The great god Pan is dead.

The wildest colts make the best horses.

Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.

In a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.

To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage

So inconsiderable a thing is fortune in respect of human nature, and so insufficient to give content to a covetous mind, that an empire of that mighty extent and sway could not satisfy the ambition of two men;

man by nature is not a wild or unsocial creature, neither was he born so, but makes himself what he naturally is not, by vicious habit; and that again on the other side, he is civilized and grows gentle by a change of place, occupation, and manner of life, as beasts themselves that are wild by nature, become tame and tractable by housing and gentler usage...