Natural Quotes - Page 34

• Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.

  Arthur Balfour

  Men, Heaven, Age

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• I've always suffered from being labelled a horror writer - just because I didn't go to university, just because I still talk in my natural voice, just because I'm not as articulate as Martin Amis.

  James Herbert

  Voice, Horror, University

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• "Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." ... They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality... Not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way.

  Paul Fussell

  War, Nice, Piano

  "The Initial Shock... A Conversation with Paul Fussell". Humanities, November/December 1996.

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• Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.

  Max Weber

  Law, Important, Valuable

  Max Weber, Edward Shils, Henry A. Finch (1949). “The methodology of the social sciences”, Free Pr

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• They [the mathematicians of the Enlightenment] defined their terms vaguely and used their methods loosely, and the logic of their arguments was made to fit the dictates of their intuition. In short, they broke all the laws of rigor and of mathematical decorum. The veritable orgy which followed the introduction of the infinitesimals... was but a natural reaction. Intuition had too long been held imprisoned by the severe rigor of the Greeks. Now it broke loose, and there were no Euclids to keep its romantic flight in check.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Law, History, Long

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• I honor the wisdom of life. I learn from life in all its forms. The tree teaches me. The sparrow and the wren sing my song. I am open to the lessons Life brings me from the earth. I learn from the wind, from the sun, from the small flowers, and from the stars. I walk without arrogance. I learn from all I encounter. I open my mind and heart to the guidance and love that come to me from the natural world.

  Julia Cameron

  Song, Nature, Stars

  Julia Cameron (1997). “Heart Steps”, p.19, Penguin

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• When a child encounters something he or she does not want, that child has all kinds of maneuvers to avoid it, such as crying, hiding, or fighting. . . Unless we are taught to face our problems directly and work through them, the pattern of avoidance will be repeated; it can be a natural, accepted way to act.

  Tarthang Tulku

  Children, Fighting, Encounters

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• Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity, any part of it.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Land, Earth

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Collected Writings”, p.399, Library of America

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• The earth belongs to the living. No man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he occupied or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the payment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might, during his own life, eat up the use of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living. No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Land, Generations

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• My method is related to an attempt to do something that might be understood by today's world, or that could at least provide understanding. In other words, doing something I understand and that everyone understands. This natural desire for communication is also found in other domains, like reading and discourse, etc. I also hate repeating myself; it gives me no pleasure whatsoever. Once I've understood something, I need to start off on new ground.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Hate, Communication

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• Seeing yourself with the eyes of love makes it natural to see the Divine Spirit in everyone you meet.

  Deepak Chopra

  Attitude, Eye, Spirit

  FaceBook post by Deepak Chopra from May 12, 2016

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• When we are truly in this interior simplicity our whole appearance is franker, more natural. This true simplicity. . . makes us conscious of a certain openness, gentleness, innocence, gaiety, and serenity. O, how amiable this simplicity is! Who will give it to me? I leave all for this. It is the pearl of the Gospel.

  Francois Fenelon

  Giving, Simplicity, Serenity

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• When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, one allows it to spill all over the people around him or her. When you suffer, you make people around you suffer. That's very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won't spread it everywhere.

  Nhat Hanh

  People, Suffering, Doe

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2001). “Anger”, p.22, Penguin

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• A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' . . . What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one . . .

  Monique Wittig

  Men, Practice, Ideas

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• When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn't lasciviousness; it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Sex, Humorous

  W. Somerset Maugham (1930). “Cakes and Ale”

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• Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals

  Will Durant

  Inspirational, Animal, Men

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1944). “The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ, a history of Roman civilization and of Christianity from their beginnings to A.D. 325”

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• Were I to make the announcement and to run, the reasons I would run is because I have a great belief in this country [America]. ... There's more natural resources than any nation in the world; the greatest education population in the world; the greatest technology of any country in the world; the greatest capacity for innovation in the world; and the greatest political system in the world.

  Edward Kennedy

  Running, Country, Technology

  Interview with Roger Mudd, October 12, 1979.

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• Modern science has vindicated the natural equality of man.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Men, Modern, Equality Of Man

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.5033, Delphi Classics

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• Yes, gentlemen, give me the map of any country, its configuration, its climate, its waters, its winds, and the whole of its physical geography; give me its natural productions, its flora, its zoology, &c., and I pledge myself to tell you, a priori, what will be the quality of man in history:-not accidentally, but necessarily; not at any particular epoch, but in all; in short, -what idea he is called to represent.

  Victor Cousin

  Country, Men, Wind

  Victor Cousin (1832). “Introduction to the History of Philosophy”, p.240

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• We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Science, Groups, Different

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• Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Causes, Occam's Razor

  Sir Isaac Newton, N. W. Chittenden (1848). “Newton's Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, p.384

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• Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Causes, Kind

  Isaac Newton (2004). “Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings”, p.87, Cambridge University Press

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• I am about to discuss the disease called 'sacred'. It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred that other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character.

  Hippocrates

  Character, Men, Inexperience

  Hippocrates (1967). “Hippocrates”

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• Man is merely a frequent effect, a monstrosity is a rare one, but both are equally natural, equally inevitable, equally part of the universal and general order. And what is strange about that? All creatures are involved in the life of all others, consequently every species... all nature is in a perpetual state of flux. Every animal is more or less a human being, every mineral more or less a plant, every plant more or less an animal... There is nothing clearly defined in nature.

  John Dewey

  Science, Animal, Men

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• [Herschel and Humboldt] stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these two. I copied out from Humboldt long passages about Teneriffe and read them aloud on one of [my walking excursions].

  Charles Darwin

  Book, Humble, Science

  Charles Darwin (1902). “Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters”, p.46, Library of Alexandria

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