quotations about nature
There is constant life in [Nature], motion and development; and yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing, and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
All nature is a vast symbolism: Every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Nature isn't just something that pushes up through the sidewalk cracks and keeps the farmers trapped in the sticks but is an elixir, a luxury that can be bought and fenced off and kept pure for the more fortunate, in an impure age.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Nature insists on whatever benefits the whole.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Our relationship with nature is dependent on more than the way the wind blows and the flowers bloom.
SHAUN HURRELL
"After the Arab Spring: learning to love nature again", Birdlife, August 11, 2017
Nature talks in symbols; he who lacks imagination cannot understand her.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
The line of Nature is crooked ... though we dig the canal beds as straight as we can, the rivers run hither and thither in their wildness.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
Despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn't care one whit about us. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Our Lonely Home in Nature", The New York Times, May 2, 2014
Nature would be scarcely worth a puff of the empty wind if it were not that all Nature is but a temple, of which God is the brightness and the glory.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nature does nothing uselessly.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Nature is God perpetually working; and we need only look around us to see and to feel that truth of a Providence to which our deepest instincts turn.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Search out the wisdom of Nature, there is depth in all her doings.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Nature is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, August 26, 1710
The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
"Premonition", A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems
God made the forests, the tiny stars, and the wild winds--and I think that he made them partly as a balance for that kind of civilization that would choke the spirit of joy out of our hearts. He made the great open places for the people who want to be alone with him and talk to him, away from the crowds that kill all reverence. And I think that he is glad at times to have us forget our cares and responsibilities that we may be nearer him--as Jesus was when he crept away into the wilderness to pray.
MARGARET ELIZABETH SANGSTER
"The Gypsy Spirit"
The man or woman that sees no beauty in surrounding nature has a soul that sleeps.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Endless Beauty in Nature", Short Essays
Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
remark made during Einstein's visit to Princeton University, May 1921
Nature never breaks her laws.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Y'know, Nature's unpredictable -- that's why we had to tame her. Maybe we went too far, but in principle we made the right decision.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible.
JEROME K. JEROME
"Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad"