Find Me In Nature Quotes & Sayings

-To me women are the most unknown factors in the universe, Vieng had then continued, -that is what makes them so interesting to us. So it's like us men have an instinctively born scientific nature to study women. As I said before it takes a long time to understand women, if it is at all possible, so once you find the right woman to love then you will never get bored of trying to study her. — Andrew James Pritchard

My father is not around any more, so I cannot ask him to do my drawings for me. So, I had to find a different way. And I came up with the solution to use the printers then; I wasn't doing anything complicated. The nature of the printer is efficiency in itself and about working, being productive. — Wade Guyton

Sometimes I worry that I'll slide back into the mindless rotisserie of work and projects that guided me in my old house... that I'll grow numb to the way nature can leave me awestruck. I worry that I'll fall asleep at the switch, only to wake up years later and find that I can't remember what I did last week or the month before that, nor do I recognize the old lady staring back at me in the mirror. — Dee Williams

We say no more on the matter and she asks me to help her find a word, an adjective to qualify something that falls on mankind, although not necessarily something of a meteorological nature, like rain, but a word associated with the apocalypse of the human soul and heart, but not in any direct way, more indirectly, like rain in the soul and nature oozing tears, she explains to me. Something like the smell of a birch tree in the rain, just one word. The obstetrician claims that no word could encompass that much, no single word could ever be that big. — Audur Ava Olafsdottir

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. — Henry David Thoreau

We have this distinctly human concept of good and bad. Nature doesn't have that. It just is. I'm not comfortable with that. I'm not accepting of the fact that we live in a profoundly brutal world. I don't fully approve of the way nature works. This lifetime of study has left me disappointed by the brutality of it all.
It has also made me more sympathetic to the human condition and the many unbearable circumstances we find ourselves in. You and I are lucky in this part of the world not to experience the sort of wretched life that is a reality for so many. — Joe Hutto

I reached for her, pushing back the fall of hair-it was heavy and thick and smooth to the touch-and tilted her chin so that the moonlight shone on her wet face.
We married each other that night, there on a bed of fallen pine needles-even today, the scent of pitch-pine stirs me-with Henry's distant flute for a wedding march and the arching white birch boughs for our basilica. At first, she quivered like an aspen, and I was ashamed at my lack of continence, yet I could not let go of her. I felt like Peleus on the beach, clinging to Thetis, only to find that, suddenly, it was she who held me; that same furnace in her nature that had flared up in anger blazed again, in passion. — Geraldine Brooks

TO my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature's sentinels.

In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible. — Emily Dickinson

And we are wild animals too, of course. We forget that. We're just mammals with attitude. In a lot of ways our skills pale before their skills, and in a lot of ways we are terrible at fitting into our environmental niche. Why we achieved this dominance is sometimes a mystery to me, and a dangerous dominance it is too. The whole point of our evolution, it seems to me, is for us to find a way to fit back into the world as it is, rather than try to remake the world to fit us, but not everybody thinks like me — Brian Doyle

Then the Bible says that human beings were made in God's image. That means, among other things, that we were created to worship and live for God's glory, not our own. We were made to serve God and others. That means paradoxically that if we try to put our own happiness ahead of obedience to God, we violate our own nature and become, ultimately, miserable. Jesus restates the principle when he says, "Whoever wants to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:25). He is saying, "If you seek happiness more than you seek me, you will have neither; if you seek to serve me more than serve happiness, you will have both. — Timothy Keller

Somehow, the telling of all this rinsed my mind clean and left me able to think clearly once more. By gathering and sorting my own feelings so, I was finally able to fashion a scale on which I could weigh my father's nature and find a balance between my disgust for him and an understanding of him; my guilt in the matter of his death against the debt he owed me for the manner of my life. At the finish of it, I felt free of him, and I was able to think calmly once more. Elinor — Geraldine Brooks

The tamer my love, the farther away it is from love. In fierceness, in heat, in longing, in risk, I find something of love's nature. In my desire for you, I burn at the right temperature to walk through love's fire. So when you ask me why I cannot love you more calmly, I answer that to love you calmly is not to love you at all. — Jeanette Winterson

The forces of blind life that work across this hilltop are as irresistible as she said they were, they work by a principle more potent than fission. But I can't look upon them as just life, impartial and eternal and in flux, an unceasing interchange of protein. And I can't find proofs of the crawl toward perfection that she believed in. Maybe what we call evil is only as she told me that first day we met, what conflicts with our interests; but maybe there are such realities as ignorance, selfishness, jealousy, malice, criminal carelessness, and maybe these things are evil no mater whose interests they serve or conflict with. — Wallace Stegner

In The Wood
I heard the water-fall rejoice
Singing like a choir,
I saw the sun flash out of it
Azure and amber fire.
The earth was like an open flower
Enamelled and arrayed,
The path I took to find its heart
Fluttered with sun and shade.
And while earth lured me, gently, gently,
Happy and all alone,
Suddenly a heavy snake
Reared black upon a stone. — Sara Teasdale

Whether being battered by the surf or swimming through the gentle undulating surface of lakes, I find inspiration in the movement of water. Sometimes I think about the journey the water has traveled, reconnecting me to the larger cycles of nature. — Janet Echelman

1:128-129
IN EACH

I was wondering how any living thing can be familiar with the divine without having some of that within it. How do creatures rest and find their joy?

An answer came: Everything comes from me. I am in each compassion, companion, each calamity, lust, any conversation among friends, secrets murmured, a spray of sweet basil, determination, the changing nature of what you want, prayer, love, everything flows from and returns here. Leaf, stem, calyx, any cause and effect, every sleep's return to waking. — Bahauddin

Every time I stand before a beautiful beach, its waves seem to whisper to me:
If you choose the simple things and find joy in nature's simple treasures,
life and living need not be so hard. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere. — Oscar Wilde

I do not believe that Mr. Jefferson ever hated me. On the contrary, I believe he always like me: but he detested Hamilton and by whole administration. Then he wished to be President of the United States, and I stood in his way. So he did everything that he could to pull me down. But if I should quarral with him for that, I might quarrel with every man I have had anything to do with in life. This is human nature ... I forgive all my enemies and hope they may find mercy in Heaven. Mr. Jefferson and I have grown old and retired from public life. So we are upon our ancient terms of goodwill. — John Adams

I am going to make you what you may perhaps consider rather a singular proposition. It is this, that if you don't like me, say so at once, and we will part now, before we have time to know anything more of each other, and I will endeavour not to cross your path again unless you seek me out. But if on the contrary, you do like me, - if you find something in my humour or turn of mind congenial to your own disposition, give me your promise that you will be my friend and comrade for a while, say for a few months at any rate. I can take you into the best society, and introduce you to the prettiest women in Europe as well as the most brilliant men. I know them all, and I believe I can be useful to you. But if there is the smallest aversion to me lurking in the depths of your nature" - here he paused, - then resumed with extraordinary solemnity - "in God's name give it full way and let me go, - because I swear to you in all sober earnest that I am not what I seem! — Marie Corelli

So what did you want to talk to Wesley about?" he asked me.
"Kelly likes him," I said. "So I figured while we were discussing Lady Macbeth's insanity and Duncan's murder, I could, you know, casually find out if he likes her too."
Colton didn't blink. "He likes her."
"He does? How do you know?"
He shrugged like it was a silly question. "We talk sometimes. He told me on the drive over he hoped she would be here."
"Then why hasn't he ever asked her out?"
"He's shy. And we're in the middle of wrestling season, midterms, and Christmas." Colton picked up the liter of soda. "Have a little patience."
I reached for the bowl of popcorn, but didn't start out of the kitchen yet. "Well can I hurry him along? Is there any chance he'll ask her out before this weekend?"
Colton shook his head at me, then walked toward the living room. "You're not quite grasping the nature of patience, Charlotte. — Janette Rallison

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

I just find that humans are predictable and stupid and animals and nature are a lot more magical to me. I'm just interested in magic, and not the silly humans. — Jason Lytle

I'm older than Time and Space, because I'm conscious. Things derive from me; the whole of Nature is the offspring of my sensations.

I seek and I don't find. I want and can't have.

Without me the sun rises and expires; without me the rain falls and the wind howls. It's not because of me that there are seasons, the twelve months, time's passage.

Lord of the world in me which, like earthly lands, I can't take with me (...) — Fernando Pessoa

there can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving r=the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy — Michael McCarthy

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield, Nature's, not honour's law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away. — Archilochus

People make a great deal of the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn, but for me a night like this, with a clear moon shining on snow, is the best
and there is not a trace of color in it. I cannot describe the effect it has on me, weird and unearthly somehow. I do not understand people who find a winter evening forbidding. — Murasaki Shikibu

I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth ... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me. — C. JoyBell C.

In a painful time of my life I went often to a wooded hillside where May apples grew by the hundreds, and I thought the sourness of their fruit had a symbolism for me. Instead, I was to find both love and happiness soon thereafter. So to me [the May apple] is the mandrake, the love symbol, of the old dealers in plant restoratives. — Hal Borland

WE HAVE COME here to learn about spirituality. I trust the genuine quality of this search but we must question its nature. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit. The teachings are treated as an external thing, external to "me," a philosophy which we try to imitate. We do not actually want to identify with or become the teachings. So if our teacher speaks of renunciation of ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego. We go through the motions, make the appropriate gestures, but we really do not want to sacrifice any part of our way of life. We become skillful actors, and while playing deaf and dumb to the real meaning of the teachings, we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path. — Chogyam Trungpa

When the Earth basks in the Sun's brilliance, you'll find me there with my arms spread wide and my face with a smile. — Saim .A. Cheeda

The habit of ignoring Nature is deeply implanted in our times. This attitude reminds me of people who never look you in the eye; I find them disturbing and always have to look away. — Marc Chagall

The life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. — Jack London

Nature's probably my greatest inspiration. Everything I need is found in nature, it compels me to create and care. If you can't find what you're looking for in wild places or the eyes of wild creatures, it probably doesn't exist. — Todd Michael Cox

However, this court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules - a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret. — Colleen McMahon

Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. — David Hume

As I review the nature of the creative drive in the inventive scientists that have been around me, as well as in myself, I find the first event is an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangible embodied in a product or process. — Edwin Land

Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn't give me what I want, but what I need. — Jennifer Arnett

The doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophy - in Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and in the Mohammedanism of the Sufis, by whom the Prophet was equated with the eternal Logos. When goodness grows weak, When evil increases, I make myself a body. In every age I come back To deliver the holy, To destroy the sin of the sinner, To establish righteousness. He who knows the nature Of my task and my holy birth Is not reborn When he leaves this body; He comes to Me. Flying from fear, From lust and anger, He hides in Me, His refuge and safety. Burnt clean in the blaze of my being, In Me many find home. Bhagavad Gita — Aldous Huxley

Yes, Keith shut up." Roberta's sly grin turned her face into a mask of pure evil. "So, let me get this straight. Miss Bitchy-Witch wants to go, no, is demanding to go to Hell and make a deal with the Devil, huh? Offering yourself in trade for a mutt and some ancient pussy? Very noble and honorable, Selena. Stupid, but just what I'd expect from a coward like you. Why fight, when you can surrender, right? Myself, I find your willingness to sacrifice your own life for those creatures rather disgusting and I don't know what Father sees in you. — Madison Sevier

I decided to start from scratch, with a simple prayer: "Hi!" I said. Someone or something hears. I don't know much about its nature, only that when I cry out, it hears me and moves closer to me, and I don't feel so alone. I feel better. And I felt better that morning, starting over. No shame in that - Saint Augustine said that you have to start your relationship with God all over from the beginning, every day. Yesterday's faith does not wait for you like a dog with your slippers and the morning paper in its mouth. You seek it, and in seeking it, you find it. — Anne Lamott

I am Mother Nature. All of creation bows before me. When people leave their cities and learn of me - walk in my woods, bathe in my rivers, eat of my harvest - they will find healing to their souls. But stray from me and return to the supposed wisdom of men, and they will find themselves in chains once more. — Seth Adam Smith

I've learned much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life, while Islam has taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me with the power of music. Here's to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly, and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength ... And most of all, I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine. — Sarah Macdonald

There's a peculiar dichotomy in the nature of almost anyone who calls himself a historian. Such scholars all piously assure us that they're telling us the real truth about what really happened, but if you turn any competent historian over and look at his damp underside, you'll find a storyteller, and you can believe me when I tell you that no storyteller's ever going to tell a story without a few embellishments. Add to that the fact that we've all got assorted political and theological preconceptions that are going to color what we write, and you'll begin to realize that no history of any event is entirely reliable ... — David Eddings

We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha's 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the lies of society & the oppressive dictates of modern consumer culture. Very few punks though seem to take it further & attempt to understand the causes & conditions of the suffering & falsehoods, unfortunately punks rarely come around to seeing that there is actually a solution & a path to personal freedom. My own life's experience w/ both Dharma practice & punk rock inspired me to try to bridge the gap between the two. I've tried to help point out the similarities, while also acknowledging the differences, & to show those of my generation who are interested that they can practice meditation & find there the freedom we have been seeking in our rebellion against the system. — Noah Levine

I need to give you one last bit of advice in the off chance this rather extraordinary and enviable situation in which you find yourself is actually true- that somehow you've fallen deep down into a Cordova story. I stared back at him. Be the good guy, he said. How do I know I'm the good guy? He pointed at me, nodding. A very wise question. You don't. Most bad guys think they're good. But there are a few signifiers. You'll be miserable. You'll be hated. You'll fumble around in the dark, alone and confused. You'll have little insight as to the true nature of things, not until the very last minute, and only if you have the stamina and the madness to go to the very, very end. But most importantly- and critically- you will act without regard for yourself. You'll be motivated by something that has nothing to do with the ego. You'll do it for justice. For grace. For love. Those large rather heroic qualities only the good have the strength to carry on their shoulders. And you'll listen. — Marisha Pessl

I got me slave-girls and slaves.' For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God's? — Gregory Of Nyssa

One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful - Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful - -Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian - -if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them. — George MacDonald

The tears in my pus-filled eyes became a thousand little crystals of ever color. Like stained-glass windows, I thought. God is with you today, Papi! In the midst of nature's monstrous elements, in the wind, the immenseness of the sea, the depth of the waves, the imposing green roof of the bush, you feel your own infinitesimal smallness, and perhaps it's here, without looking for Him, that you find God, that you touch Him with your finger. I had sensed Him at night during the thousands of hours I had spent buried alive in dank dungeons without a ray of sun; I touched Him today in a sun that would devour everything too weak to resist it. I touched God, I felt Him around me, inside me. He even whispered in my ear: You will suffer; you will suffer more. But this time I am on your side. You will be free. You will, I promise you. — Henri Charriere

Big G.B. said, "Your Daddy ain't magic."
I said, "He ain't?"
He said, "Naw, there ain't any magic."
I said, "What about the blind man's dummy? Is Joesph of Arimathea magic?"
He said, "Get your shotgun, Sugar."
I went to the corner near the stove and took my shotgun by the barrel. I got my shell bag and looked at Big G.B.to see what he was thinking. His face didn't tell me. I stood by the kitchen door holding the shotgun and shells. I said, "Is Joseph of Arimathea magic, Big G.B.?"
He said, "There ain't no magic. Magic is the same as sentimental. Scratch the surface of sentimental and you know what you find?
Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Magic is German in nature and evil and not real. Scratch magic, Sugar, and you're looking for death. — Lewis Nordan

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient. — Duane Michals

I am by nature an inward man, he said silently into the disconnected phone. I have struggled, in my fashion, to find my way towards an appreciation of the high things, towards a small measure of fineness. On good days I felt it was within my grasp, somewhere within me, somewhere within. But it eluded me. I have become embroiled, in things, in the world and in its messes, and I cannot resist. The grotesque has me, as before the quotidian had me, in its thrall — Salman Rushdie

Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. — Walter Isaacson

I look up at the sky, wondering if I'll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don't. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. Clouds are always taciturn. I probably shouldn't be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative often self-centered nature that still doubts itself
that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect. — Haruki Murakami

There are times when I, without willing it, mount to the height of contemplation; with my will I am drawn down from it because of the limitations of human nature and find safety in abasement. I know many things that are unknown to most men, yet I am more ignorant than all others. I rejoice because Christ, 'whom I have believed' (II Tim. 1:12), has bestowed on me an eternal and unshakable kingdom, yet I constantly weep as one who is unworthy of that which is above, and I cease not. — Symeon The New Theologian

No matter what I attempt, even if it's the most simple of tasks, it always ends in failure. Unfortunately, I find that my life is one big regret after another. Yet, after all these years, I still don't know when to give up. Is it my fault to keep trying when the results are always the same? Is it impossible for me to make things right? Even if I'd try to give up, I don't think I could. It's not in my nature to sumbit in the face of disappointment. In the end, I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. I really am an idiot ... — Katsura Hoshino

I may enter a zone of transcendence, in which I marvel at all the accidents of fate, since the beginning of life on earth, that led to my genes being created and my standing in this particular garden in a contemplative and imagining mind. I've been reading recently how reflection evolved. what a fascinating solution to the rigors of survival ... how amazing that a few basic ingredients- the same ones that form the mountains, plants, and rivers- when arranged differently and stressed could result in us.
More and more of late, I find myself standing outside of life, with a sense of the human saga laid out before me. it is a private vision, balanced between youth and old age, a vision in which I understand how caught up in striving we humans get, and a little of why, and how difficult it is even to recognize, since it feels integral to our nature and is. but I find it interesting that, according to many religions, life and begins and ends in a garden. — Diane Ackerman

I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mystery of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise, and to come unto me, for I am the soul of nature, that gives life to the universe, from me all things proceed, and unto me all things must return, but for those who would seek to worship me, let them do so with joy in their hearts for all acts of love and of pleasure are my rituals, let them develop within them the qualities of compassion, kindness, humility, love, understanding. But for those who seek to know me, let them know that if all they are seeking and they are yearning it will avail them not until they learn the great mystery that which you seek you find not within yourself you'll never find it without. For I am that which is attained at the end of all suffering. I am she of a thousand names. — The Empress

Saint Augustine cries, Lord I cannot love you, but come in and love yourself in me. According to Saint Paul, we must put off our own natural form and put on the form of God, and Saint Augustine tells us to discard our own mode of nature; then the divine nature will flow in and be revealed. Saint Augustine says, Those who seek and find, find not. He who seeks and finds not, he alone finds. Saint Paul says, What I was, was not I, it was God in me. — Meister Eckhart

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. — Henry David Thoreau

I know very well you can't help me," he said. "But I tell you, because unsuccessful and superfluous people like me find their salvation in talking. I have to generalise about everything I do. I'm bound to look for an explanation and justification of my absurd existence in somebody else's theories, in literary types - in the idea that we, upper-class Russians, are degenerating, for instance, and so on. Last night, for example, I comforted myself by thinking all the time: 'Ah, how true Tolstoy is, how mercilessly true!' And that did me good. Yes, really, brother, he is a great writer, say what you like!" Samoylenko, who had never read Tolstoy and was intending to do so every day of his life, was a little embarrassed, and said: "Yes, all other authors write from imagination, but he writes straight from nature. — Anton Chekhov

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! — Annie Dillard

Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left. — Jack London

This age is truly crooked, perverse, and adulterous; it is full of fornication and immorality. People talk about immorality without one bit of shame. Who can stand in such a generation? Not one of us is able to stand. We all have a fallen nature within us, the same evil nature that all men have. We need grace. We must come to the throne of grace boldly and say, Lord, I am here. I need Your grace. I am not coming to ask You to give me good things. I am coming to find grace to meet my need. Lord, I cannot go to work or to school without Your presence. Lord, I cannot go to a department store without Your presence. Lord, I need You to stand with me. Come to be my strength. Lord, uphold me and sustain me. — Witness Lee

The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex. — E. M. Forster

I felt compassion for the poor people who were taken in by [supernatural] follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything surpassing my first beliefs, and that through no fault of my curiosity; but reason has taught me to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the distinction of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to measure these things by our capacity and competence. If we call prodigies or miracles whatever our reason cannot reach, how many of these appear continually before our eyes! Let us consider through what clouds and how gropingly we are led to the knowledge of most of the things that are right in our hands; assuredly we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge that takes away their strangeness. — Michel De Montaigne

Tranquility, serenity, and beauty of nature taught me how to find happiness in life and in the silence of eternity. — Debasish Mridha

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. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Human beings are always fighting about which version of God to worship, or whether any God exists at all. But it seems to me we are only likely to find answers about the nature of the universe, or the possibility of a creator, if we look. And we can't do that in any meaningful way if our only commitment is to the answers we've presupposed. — Steve Volk

It costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in ... and if he [the sun] is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided. — Henry David Thoreau

But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered. There may be mistakes or gap — Vincent Van Gogh

I do not understand what I do ... It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me ... For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing ... I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me ... I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin ... I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. — Anonymous

To me the erotic is the relationship that organically manifests itself between people finding and exploring love. It is the universality of accepting the darkness that makes up human nature, the darkness I find so romantic within that dance, the inevitable opening up that lets in the light of sensuality between two human beings becoming one together without the confines of preconceived morality. In short, an exploration of all the facets of both the subconscious and conscious of light and dark. "Emotional connectedness. — R.B. O'Brien

I grew up then, into this life of jazz, and fell immediately into the state of almost audible confusion. Life stood over me like an immoral schoolmistress, editing my thoughts. It seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident has brought us to where we could fly in her face. We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper and presently, it's the salt of the Earth. If any one can find lesson in that, let him stand forth. Am I crazy trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge towards truth? Trying to separate the knowable from the unknowable? — F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm not a dog person by nature. Cats are more my bag. I like their independence, that look in their eyes that says 'Hey Jack. I go where the food goes'. Cats have an attitude like that, someone once said that cats were once revered as gods and they don't like us to forget it. Dogs don't have that attitude(at least not for me). What dogs have is a loyalty that borders upon stupidity. You can kick a cat and that's it. It'll go somewhere else and find itself another lap to sit upon. You can kick a dog and it'll just keep on coming back for more. — Paul Christison

I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live in Time, and do not know what Time is. I find myself at a point between two eternities, as our wise men say, yet I have no conception of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to discover what produces thought. I do not know whether or not I think with my head the same way that I hold things with my hands. Not only is the origin of my thought unknown to me, but the origin of my movements is equally hidden: I do not know why I exist. Yet every day people ask me questions on all these issues. I must give answers, yet have nothing worth saying, so I talk a great deal, and am confused and ashamed of myself afterwards for having spoken. — Voltaire

I don't know myself," he said. "I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me, and I say, 'That white board must become something!' I work for a long time, I come back home dissatisfied, I put it away in the closet. When I have rested a little I go to look at it with a kind of fear. I am still dissatisfied because I have too clearly in my mind the splendid original to be content with what I have made of it. But after all, I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered, there may be mistakes or gaps, but there is something in it of what the woods or beach or figure has told me. Do you understand?" "No. — Irving Stone

You are worth everything that nature can give you.
And I pray to whatever I believe in that you find your happiness. You find pride in yourself.
And you find true love.
And you can look at that person and understand the impact that have had in your life.
Because you have surprised me with every step you took.
And if letting you go means that I love you.
Then I love you.
Have fun out there. — Philippe Renaud

By nature I will find hope in everything. Even if it's the most incredibly hopeless situation or circumstance. That's just me ... I'll never be able to see things any other way. — Michael Stipe

Flora took pleasure in the delicacy of her approach and studied the ways of the smallest, sweetest blooms she could find, tiny pimpernels and forget-me-nots hiding in the pockets of the fields. The energy of the sun on her body and the joy of foraging filled her soul. She flew the fields and gathered until the light began to fade and she heard the sound of her forager sisters' wings turning for home. Then she joined them. — Laline Paull

E idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein. — Albert Einstein

New places and new roles forced me into acute awareness of how others were responding to me. When a human is being himself, flowing with his inner nature, wearing his natural appropriate masks, integrated with his environment, he is normally unaware of subtleties in another's behavior. Only if the other person breaks a conventional pattern is awareness stimulated. However, breaking my established patterns was threatening to my deeply ingrained selves and pricked me to a lvel of consciousness which is unusual, unusual since the whole instinct of human behavior is to find environments congenial to the relaxation of consciousness. By creating problems for myself I created thought. — Luke Rhinehart