Whatever befalls in the course of nature should be
considered good. Cicero, De senectute,
xix, c. 78 B.C.
Nature without education has oftener raised man to glory and
virtue than education without natural abilities. Cicero, Pro archia poeta, 62 B.C.
Nature resolves everything into its component elements, but
annihilates nothing. Lucretius, De rerum
natura, I, 57 B.C.
Those things are better which are perfected by nature than
those which are finished by art. Cicero, De
natura deorum, ii, 45 B.C.
Drive out nature with a pitchfork, and she will always come
back. Horace, Satires, c. 25 B.C.
God made the beauties of nature like a child playing in the
sand. Ascribed to Apollonius of Tyana (c.
10 B.C.-80 A.D.)
It is difficult to change nature. (Naturam mutare difficile est.) Seneca, De Ira, c. 43
It is hard to make out whether [nature] is a kind parent or
a harsh stepmother to man. Pliny the Elder, Natural
History, VII, c. 79
Nature is the art of God Eternal. Dante, De monarchia, c. 1320
Nature never breaks her own laws. Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, c. 1500
The prodigality of nature. Shakespeare, Richard III, I, c. 1592
Such is the nature of the beast. English Saying, traced to
the 17th century
To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature. Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, c. 1601
Nothing in nature is unserviceable, No, not even inutility
itself. John Marston, Sophonisba, 11,
1606
In nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, c. 1606
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
Francis Bacon, Essays, xxxviii, 1612
Nature is not governed except by obeying her. Francis Bacon,
De augmentis scientiarum, iii, 1623
Nature seldom gives us the very best; for that we must have
recourse to art. Baltarsar Gracian, The Art
of Worldly Wisdom, xii, 1647
Accuse not nature, she hath done her part;
Do thou but
thine!
John Milton, Paradise Lost, viii,
1667
Nature has some perfections, to show that she is the image
of God; and some defects, to show that she is only His image. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, xxiv, 1670
Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human
imaginings. Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics,
i, 1677.
The beauty, symmetry, regularity and order seen in the
universe are the effects of a blind, unintelligent nature. Pierre Bayle, Pensées diverses, 1680
I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat
resembling the opera. Bernard de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des
mondes, i, 1686
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, I, 1711
In nature there can never be two beings which are exactly
alike. G. W. Leibniz, The Monadology,
ix, 1714
Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the
end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever. David Hume, Essays Moral and Political, I, 1741
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to
me. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Martha Jefferson Randolph, 1790
The nearer we get to any natural object the more
incomprehensible it becomes. A grain of sand is undoubtedly not what I take it
to be. G. C. Lichtenberg, Reflections,
1799
I must confess that I am not romance-hit about nature. The
earth, the sea, and sky (when all is said) is but as a house to dwell in.
Charles Lamb, Letter to Thomas Manning, Nov. 28, 1800
Nature has an etiquette all her own. Ludwig van Beethoven, Letter
to Breitkopf and Haertel, Sept. 17, 1812
Nature is not lavish of her beauties; they are widely
scattered, and occasionally displayed, to be selected with care, and gathered
with difficulty. Byron, Letter to John Murray, Feb. 7, 1821
Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an
exception is really according to order. J.W. Goethe, Conversations with Eckerman, Dec. 9, 1824
Nature is the term in which we comprehend all things that
are representable in the forms of time and space, and subjected to the relations
of cause and effect: and the cause of the existence of which, therefore, is to
be sought for perpetually in something antecedent. S. T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 1825
There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and
volatile. R.W. Emerson, Circles, 1841
Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. R.W. Emerson, Compensation, 1841
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very
few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. R.W. Emerson, History, 1841
Nature red in tooth and claw. Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, lvi, 1850
Down with pulpit, down with priest,
And give us nature's teaching.J.G. Whittier, A Sabbath Scene, 1850
Our old mother nature has pleasant and cheery tones enough
for us when she comes in her dress of blue and gold over the eastern hilltops;
but when she follows us upstairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet and diamonds,
every creak of her sandals and whisper of her lips is full of mystery and fear.
O. W. Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table,
vii, 1859
I wonder nature don't retire
From public life disgusted. W. S. Gilbert, Margate, c 1865
As the nature of any given thing is in the aggregate of its
powers and properties, so nature in the abstract is the aggregate of the powers
and properties of all things. Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together
with the causes which produce them; including not only all that happens, but
all that is capable of happening. J.S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion, iv, 1874
The more we study art, the less we care for nature. What art
really reveals to us is nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her
extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, 1889
Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with
which it is possible to feel a sympathy. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, xx, 1902
* * *
Source: Mencken, Dictionary of Quotations, 835-839
