Nature A-B

When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.
Henry Beston (1888-1968) – The Outermost House (1928)

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.
Henry Beston (1888-1968) – “The Headlong Wave,”, The Outermost House, Chapter III, p 43, Rinehart & Co, NY, NY, (1928)

As well expect Nature to answer your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair.
Henry Beston (1888-1968) – The Outermost House, Chapter X, p221, Rinehart & Co, NY, NY, (1928)

Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man.
Henry Beston (1888-1968) – The Outermost House, Forward (p. ix), Rinehart & Co. NY, NY, 1928

Nature always tends to act in the simplest way.
Johann Bernoulli (1700-1782) – Essay on the Brachistochrone, Acta Eruditorum, May 1697

Nature is just enough; but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) – “Sex and Evolution,” in The Neglected Canon: Nine Women Philosophers: First to the Twentieth Century, ed Dykeman, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999, p. 350

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity . . . and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
William Blake (1757-1827) – The Letters of William Blake, ed Geoffrey Keynes (1956,) Letter to Rev. Dr. Trusler, August 23, 1799

In Nature nothing remains constant. Everything is in a perpetual state of transformation, motion and change.
David Bohm (1917-1992) – Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Chapter 1, p1, University of Penn. Press, 1957

Nature always springs to the surface and manages to show what she is. It is vain to stop or try to drive her back. She breaks through every obstacle, pushes forward, and at last makes for herself a way.
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux  (1636-1711) Quoted in Treasury of Thought Forming an Encyclopædia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors ,By Maturin Murray Ballou · 1894, p. 359.

Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls forth faith rather than reason.
Hal Borland (1900-1978) – “The Certainty – April 5,” Sundial of the Seasons (1964)

There are no idealists in the plant world and no compassion. The rose and the morning glory know no mercy. Bindweed, the morning glory, will quickly choke its competitors to death, and the fence row rose will just as quietly crowd out any other plant that tried to share its roothold. Idealism and mercy are human terms and human concepts.
Hal Borland (1900-1978) – Book of Days, 22 July, 1976, 1976

There are some things, but not too many, toward which the countryman knows he must be properly respectful if he would avoid pain, sickness and injury. Nature is neither punitive nor solicitous, but she has thorns and fangs as wells as bowers and grassy banks.
Hal Borland (1900-1978) – Beyond your Doorstep: A handbook to the Country, Ch. 13, p. 303, 1962

Nature seems to look after her own only up to a certain point; beyond that they are supposed to fend for themselves.
Hal Borland (1900-1978) – The Enduring Pattern, “Life, Flesh and Blood: Amphibians,” (p.185), Simon & Schuster, NY, NY, 1959

Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.
Hal Borland (1900-1978) – The Enduring Pattern, “Life, Flesh and Blood: Reptiles,” (p.189), Simon & Schuster, NY, NY, 1959

Nature always looks out for the preservation of the universe.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691 ) – A free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, Section IV, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p 31

It is one thing to be able to help nature produce things, and another thing to understand well the nature of the things produced.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691 ) The Sceptical Chymist, The Third Part, p.73.

Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding.
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) – “The Creative Mind,” Science and Human Values (1956), Lecture given at MIT, Feb 26, 1953

Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they being both servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature; were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos; nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) – Religio Medici, Part 1, (sec. 16) 1642 – See also Dante Alighieri, above

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans’d unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) – Religio Medici, Part 1, Section 16., 1642

Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputable axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) – Religio Medici, Part 1, Section 15 in Thomas Browne and Simon Wilkin (Ed.), The Works of Thomas Browne (1852),  Vol 2, p 339.  Quoting the axiom from Aristotle. See also Isaac Newton quoting the same axiom.

Nature is none other than God in all things.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) – Quoted in Elements of Pantheism (2004), Paul A. Harrison

Nature does not tolerate the whimsical and the inane; all her structures are on principles, and she allows no others.
J. Ingram Bryan (1868-1953) – The Interpretation of Nature in English Poetry, Ch 1 (p. 6) Tokyo, Japan, 1932

The great workman of nature is time.
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) – ‘Les Animaux Sauvages’, Historie Naturelle, 1756, Quoted in Jacques Rooger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed K. Benson, tr R. Ellrich, 1997, p468.

Nature is the system of laws established by the Creator for the existence of things and for the succession of creatures. Nature is not a thing, because this thing would be everything. Nature is not a creature, because this creature would be God. But one can consider it as an immense vital power, which encompasses all, which animates all, and which, subordinated to the power of the first Being, has begun to act only by his order, and still acts only by his concourse or consent . . . Time, space and matter are its means, the universe its object, motion and life its goal.
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) – ‘De La Nature: Premiere Vue’, Historie naturelle, generale et particuliere avec la descritpion du cabinet du roi (1764), Vol 12, iii-1v. Tr Phillip R. Sloan

All scientists have found that preconceived notions, dogmas, and all personal prejudice and bias, must be set aside, listening patiently, quietly and reverently to the lessons, one by one, which Mother Nature has to teach, shedding light on that which was before a mystery, so that all who will may see and know. She conveys her truths only to those who are passive and receptive.
Luther Burbank (1849-1926) – “How to Produce New Trees, Fruits and Flowers,” Proceedings of the American Pomological Society, Session of 1895, Volumes 24-26, Twenty-Fourth Session, p. 59.

The serenity produced by the contemplation and philosophy of nature is the only remedy for prejudice, superstition, and inordinate self-importance, teaching us that we are all a part of Nature herself, strengthening the bond of sympathy which should exist between ourselves and our brother man. . .
Luther Burbank (1849-1926) – “How to Produce New Trees, Fruits and Flowers,” Proceedings of the American Pomological Society, Session of 1895, Volumes 24-26, Twenty-Fourth Session, p. 61.

Nature’s law affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws, you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.
Luther Burbank (1849-1926) – The Harvest of the Years, Luther Burbank, Wilbur Hall, Houghton Mifflin company, 1931, p. 267.

Nature is never more truly herself, than in her grandest form.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) – The works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and Critical Introduction, “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” Holdsworth & Ball, London, 1834, p. 324.

Never did nature say one thing and wisdom say another.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) – The works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and Critical Introduction, “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” Holdsworth & Ball, London, 1834, p. 324.

Look abroad through Nature’s range,
Nature’s mighty law is change.
Robert Burns (1759-1796) – Let not woman e’er complain, 1794.

. . . in the order of nature we may behold the ways of the Eternal.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – The Light of Day, Houghton, Mifflin, 1900, p. 50.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – Time and Change, XII The Gospel of Nature, p. 247.

One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand – to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – “The Divine Soil,” The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1908, p 440.

Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightning smite him, as if he were only a dog.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – The Heart of Burrough’s Journals, Jan 17, 1866, p. 46, Houghten Mifflin Co., Boston, 1928

Nature will not be conquered, but gives herself freely to her true lover — to him who revels with her, bathes in her seas, sails her rivers, camps in her woods, and with no mercenary ends, accepts all.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – The Heart of Burrough’s Journals, Jan 17, 1866, p. 46, Houghten Mifflin Co., Boston, 1928

Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – Harvest of a Quiet Eye: The Natural World of John Burroughs, The Gospel of Nature, 5 (p. 149, 1976

To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes; to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures; to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies, a source of inspiration; to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables; to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) – “The Art of Seeing Things,” Leaf and Tendril (1908)