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NATURE quotes
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon; of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.
Nature hath nothing made so base, but can read some instruction to the wisest man.
Nature is commanded by obeying her.
He that follows nature is never out of his way. Nature is sometimes subdued, but seldom extinguished.
In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom-full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!
Nature is the most thrifty thing in the world; she never wastes anything; she undergoes change, but there's no annihilation—the essence remains.
The ignorant man marvels at the exceptional; the wise man marvels at the common; the greatest wonder of all is the regularity of nature.
Nature—a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter.
Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.
It is truly a most Christian exercise to extract a sentiment of piety from the works and appearances of nature. Our Saviour expatiates on a flower, and draws from it the delightful argument of confidence in God. He gives us to see that taste may be combined with piety, and that the same heart may be occupied with all that is serious in the contemplations of religion, and be, at the same time, alive to the charms and loveliness of nature.
Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to, and answered by the living soul of man.
All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.
The man who can really, in living union of the mind and heart, converse with God through nature, finds in the material forms around him, a source of power and happiness inexhaustible, and like the life of angels.—The highest life and glory of man is to be alive unto God; and when this grandeur of sensibility to him, and this power of communion with him is carried, as the habit of the soul, into the forms of nature, then the walls of our world are as the gates of heaven.
Nature is beautiful, always beautiful! Every little flake of snow is a perfect crystal, and they fall together as gracefully as if fairies of the air caught water-drops and made them into artificial flowers to garland the wings of the wind!
I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself, with implicit obedience, to her sacred ordinances.
If we did not take great pains to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us.
Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty!
A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than to the memory.
Nature is but a name for an effect whose cause is God.
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts: the sight of the deep-blue sky, and the clustering stars above seem to impart a quiet to the mind.
The laws of nature are but the thoughts and agencies of God—the modes in which he works and carries out the designs of his providence and will.
Nature and revelation are alike God's books; each may have mysteries, but in each there are plain practical lessons for everyday duty.
Nature is a frugal mother, and never gives without measure. When she has work to do, she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped.
Nature is no sentimentalist—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.
Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in. everywhere.
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave, and severe; it is always in the right, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure.
Nature is the living, visible garment of God.
Sympathy with nature is a part of the good man's religion.
Natural objects themselves, even when they make no claim to beauty, excite the feelings, and occupy the imagination. Nature pleases, attracts, delights, merely because it is nature. We recognize in it an Infinite Power.
A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.
Nature and wisdom always say the same.
Study nature as the countenance of God.
The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature,—were man as unerring in his judgments as nature.
In contemplation of created things, by steps we may ascend to God.
There is a signature of wisdom and power impressed on the works of God, which evidently distinguishes them from the feeble imitations of men.—Not only the splendor of the sun, but the glimmering light of the glowworm, proclaims his glory.
Nature is an AEolian harp, a musical instrument, whose tones are the reecho of higher strings within us.
Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master,—the root, the branch, the fruits,—the principles, the consequences.
Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image.
It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature, whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable.
Looks through nature up to nature's God.
Reid, Thomas
The laws of nature are the rules according to which effects are produced; but there must be a lawgiver—a cause which operates according to these rules.—The laws of navigation never steered a ship, and the law of gravity never moved a planet.
In nature, all is managed for the best with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all; never employing on one thing more than enough, but with exact economy retrenching the superfluous, and adding force to what is principal in everything.
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.
Nature is man's teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.
Nature is avariciously frugal; in matter, it allows no atom to elude its grasp; in mind, no thought or feeling to perish. It gathers up the fragments that nothing be lost.
Nature does not capriciously scatter her secrets as golden gifts to lazy pets and luxurious darlings, but imposes tasks when she presents opportunities, and uplifts him whom she would inform. The apple that she drops at the feet of Newton is but a coy invitation to follow her to the stars.
Epicureanism is human nature drunk, cynicism is human nature mad, and stoicism is human nature in despair.
Nature is the glass reflecting God, as by the sea reflected is the sun, too glorious to be gazed on in his sphere.
Read nature; nature is a friend to truth; nature is Christian, preaches to mankind, and bids dead matter aid us in our creed.
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