Nature Quotes - Page 55

The notion that Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps. She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.

Nature always levies her tribute.

I love romantic comedies. They're for me the easiest thing to do and the most natural to do. There's nothing natural about holding an uzi hanging out of a moving van shooting at people. That's not second nature to me, thank God.

Those herbs which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but, being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild thyme and watermints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.

Like Molière's M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of their craft has become evident only within recent times A renaissance of logical studies in modern times begins with the publication in 1847 of George Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic.

To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.

Mountains don't kill people, they just sit there.

We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature.

We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born - a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.

The heart of childhood, from seven to eleven, is the critical period for bonding with the earth.

Exploration of the natural world begins in early childhood, flourishes in middle childhood, and continues in adolescence as a pleasure and a source of strength for social action.

Cheerfulness is full of significance: it suggests good health, a clear conscience, and a soul at peace with all human nature.

Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.

Believe one who has tried, you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in the books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from the masters.

It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

For truly in nature there are many operations that are far more than mechanical. Nature is not simply an organic body like a clock, which has no vital principle of motion in it; but it is a living body which has life and perception, which are much more exalted than a mere mechanism or a mechanical motion.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

I could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground.

The streams with softest sound are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now, if e'er you can.

We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity.