Nature Quotes

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.

Water is the driving force in nature.

The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present. Life, if well spent, is long.

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils.

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard: but if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age their art steadily declined.

The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

Nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience.

Everything comes from everything, and everything is made out of everything, and everything returns into everything.

The wisest and noblest teacher is nature itself.

Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.

The eye, the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding can most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of Nature; and the ear is second.

The earth is moved from its position by the weight of a tiny bird resting upon it.

Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals.

Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body.

Of the original phenomena, light is the most enthralling.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air.

Of the four elements water is the second in weight and the second in respect of mobility. It is never at rest until it unites with the sea.

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.