Quotes on Nature

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

Beauty is composed of many things and never stands alone. It is part of horizons, blue in the distance, great primeval silences, knowledge of all things of the earth. It embodies the hopes and dreams of those who have gone before, including the spirit world; it is so fragile it can be destroyed by a sound or thought. It may be infinitesimally small or encompass the universe itself. It comes in a swift conception wherever nature has not been disturbed.

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

It is the nature of men having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.

In reality, we haven't escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form.

The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.

The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth.

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don't actually "become" a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.

Man has been driven out of the paradise in which he could trust his instincts.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

When there is in nature no fixed condition, how much less must there be in the life of a people, beings endowed with mobility and movement!

People in cities may forget the soil for as long as a hundred years, but Mother Nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely.

To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them.

Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [Passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?

The solution for mankind is of a spiritual nature. It is not a political or religious solution. It's the ability to love each other. That's the only solution I see.

We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.‎