Well Known Nature Quotes & Sayings

Orell had been slain by the turncloak crow Jon Snow, and his hate for his killer had been so strong that Varamyr found himself hating the beastling boy as well. He had known what Snow was the moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side. One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it. — George R R Martin

A few have become acquainted with Orwell's 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life. — Czeslaw Milosz

For the world is - allow us the homely figure - the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, to use another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of human thought. Take any word expressive of emotion - take the word 'emotion' itself - and you will find that its primary meaning is of the outer world. In the swaying of the woods, in the unrest of the "wavy plain" the imagination saw the picture of a well-known condition of the human mind; and hence the word 'emotion'.
The man who cannot invent will never discover.
Wisdom as well as folly will serve a fool's purpose; he turns all into folly. — George MacDonald

Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being. — James Madison

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. Nature — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The arches of the woods, even at high noon, cast their sombre shadows on the spot, which the brilliant rays of the sun that struggled through the leaves contributed to mellow, and if such an expression can be used, to illuminate. It was probably from a similar scene that the mind of man first got its idea of the effects of gothic tracery and churchly hues, this temple of nature producing some such effect, so far as light and shadow were concerned, as the well-known offspring of human invention. — James Fenimore Cooper

Environmentali sm is really about seeing our place in world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently - that we are part of nature-utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival. — David Suzuki

It's to surprise people about something that is extremely well known. I mean human reproduction, the human body, nature and so on. To surprise them with a new technique. — Lennart Nilsson

It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in "The King in Yellow," all felt that human nature could not bear the strain nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect. — Robert W. Chambers

The Source of Love is the Almighty Creator, who is to all of existence like the sun is to life on earth. Yet, the light of this Love is so brilliant, only its halo can be perceived. The Source of Pure Love is the ultimate source of all love. From that Love you are emanated, or created. Like a ray of light, you are an entity of Love. Love is the name of God, and Love is your name as well. In that, you are created in the likeness of God. You are known and shall always be known by the nature of your love. — Glenda Green

The secrets of nature are concealed; her agency is perpetual, but we do not always discover its effects; time reveals them from age to age; and although she is always the same in herself, she is not always equally well known. — Blaise Pascal

In addition to the well-known benefits of health and well-being derived from exercise, there are other unique advantages to being a runner. You are more attuned to not only your body but also the world around you. The outdoor life you lead as a runner gives you a special relationship with your surroundings: nature, the climate, the seasons. As you depend on these things to accommodate your activity, you grow to understand and appreciate them. — Grete Waitz

The determination of the relationship and mutual dependence of the facts in particular cases must be the first goal of the Physicist; and for this purpose he requires that an exact measurement may be taken in an equally invariable manner anywhere in the world ... Also, the history of electricity yields a well-known truth-that the physicist shirking measurement only plays, different from children only in the nature of his game and the construction of his toys. — Franz Karl Achard

Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing.
I know they smell just as well as I know I existed.
They're things known from the outside.
But now I know with my breathing from the back of my head. — Alberto Caeiro

Kate thought Yolo was of the bear spirit. The bear, according to ancient people who had known bears well, was of a loyal, generous and young-loving nature. Bear mothers were the most dedicated parents imaginable. The most fierce in protecting their young; but also the most peaceful creatures when left unmolested. People with bear spirit had a certain level feel about them: they often seemed large and strong, even if they weren't particularly. They gave off a vibe that made you want to sit near them. Not to talk, necessarily, but to feel. — Alice Walker

A famous preacher had a friend who was well known for his short temper. One day, at a party, he asked this friend to help him serve some drinks. The preacher himself poured the drinks, deliberately filling several of the glasses a bit too full. He then passed the tray to his friend. As they walked into the room to distribute the drinks, he accidentally-on-purpose bumped into the friend, causing the tray to jiggle and some of the drinks to slosh over the brim and spill. "There you are, you see," said the preacher. "When you're jolted, what spills out is whatever is filling you." When you're suddenly put to the test and don't have time to think about how you're coming across, your real nature will come out. That's why character needs to go all the way through: whatever fills you will spill out. And it's up to you to do something about it. — N. T. Wright

But what answer? Well that the soul - for she was conscious of a movement in her of some creature beating its way about her and trying to escape which momentarily she called the soul - is by nature unmated, a widow bird; a bird perched aloof on that tree.
But then Bertram, putting his arm through hers in his familiar way, for he had known her all her life, remarked that they were not doing their duty and must go in.
At that moment, in some back street or public house, the usual terrible sexless, inarticulate voice rang out; a shriek, a cry. And the widow bird, startled, flew away, describing wider and wider circles until it became (what she called her soul) remote as a crow which has been startled up into the air by a stone thrown at it. — Virginia Woolf

Highly complex numbers like the Comma of Pythagoras, Pi and Phi (sometimes called the Golden Proportion), are known as irrational numbers. They lie deep in the structure of the physical universe, and were seen by the Egyptians as the principles controlling creation, the principles by which matter is precipitated from the cosmic mind.

Today scientists recognize the Comma of Pythagoras, Pi and the Golden Proportion as well as the closely related Fibonacci sequence are universal constants that describe complex patterns in astronomy, music and physics. ...

To the Egyptians these numbers were also the secret harmonies of the cosmos and they incorporated them as rhythms and proportions in the construction of their pyramids and temples. — Jonathan Black

Music, together with certain sorts of majestic landscape, had a well-known tendency to induce such faux-sublime moments: artificial intimations of transcendent truths, grandiose hunches about the nature of the universe. It was all nonsense. Her tears had been no different from the ones people cried at sentimental television commercials. They represented nothing but a momentary and regrettable submission to kitsch. — Zoe Heller

Well, ain't that just the way of the world. Everything come to an end, whether you wants it to or not. All that nature out there: over. The Snare: dead and gone. Even a love that make a man giddy and romantic, that give him a hope and joy he never known, that brave him into taking a slingshot to the impossible and bringing it almost complete to its knees
even a love like that come to an end. Life just ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And there is nothing you can do about it neither. (Homan) — Rachel Simon

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. — Alain De Botton

Wholly absorbed into my own conduits to
an inner nature or subterranean lake
the depths or bounds of which I more and more
explore and know more
of, in that sense that other than that all else
closes out and I tend further to fall into
the Beloved Lake and I am blinder from
spending time as insistently in and on
this personal preserve from which
what I do do emerges more well-known than
other ways and other outside places which
don't give as much and distract me from
keeping my attentions as clear
Charles Olson, "Additions", March 1968 - 2 — Charles Olson

It is well-known that there are many faces in the world over the finishing of which nature did not take much trouble, did not employ any fine tools such as files, gimlets, and so on, but simply hacked them out with round strokes: one chop-a nose appears; another chop-lips appear; eyes are scooped out with a big drill; and she lets it go into the world rough-hewn, saing: ALIVE! — Nikolai Gogol

I am apt, however, to entertain a Suspicion, that the World is still too young to fix any general stable Truths in Politics, which will remain true to the latest Posterity. We have not as yet had Experience of above three thousand Years; so that not only the Art of Reasoning is still defective in this Science, as well as in all others, but we even want sufficient Materials, upon which we can reason. 'Tis not sufficiently known, what Degrees of Refinement, either in Virtue or Vice, human Nature is susceptible of; nor what may be expected of Mankind from any great Revolution in their Education, Customs, or Principles. — David Hume

Having to be somewhere at a specific time and performing according to others' expectations can put pressure on them and create a paralysis of will. Because many people with AS are highly intelligent, they may have a hard time with teachers that are not up to par in their eyes, and bosses that don't run things as well as they could. If they don't quit because of any of the above, the know-it-all nature of an intelligent Aspie has been known to upset a few bosses here and there, causing termination of employment. As a result, many have gone through a series of jobs and have had unsatisfactory experiences which get more discouraging as the years pass. — Rudy Simone

The notion of a crucified Lord was a scandal to the first-century world. Crucifixion was a public form of execution, and its cruelty was well known. For Jews, death by crucifixion meant that a person was under the curse of God, while pagans protested that it was sheer madness.502 To associate God with the world of suffering was therefore utterly inappropriate. But in spite of the offensive nature of Jesus' suffering and death, that is precisely the way God has worked, and Hebrews gives it a central place. It was fitting503 that God should effect his glorious saving purposes through Christ's sufferings.504 — Peter T. O'Brien

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,
for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,
do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. — Henry David Thoreau

The behavior of temperature and heat and so forth can certainly be understood in terms of atoms: That's the subject known as "statistical mechanics." But it can equally well be understood without knowing anything whatsoever about atoms: That's the phenomenological approach we've been discussing, known as "thermodynamics." It is a common occurrence in physics that in complex, macroscopic systems, regular patterns emerge dynamically from underlying microscopic rules. Despite the way it is sometimes portrayed, there is no competition between fundamental physics and the study of emergent phenomena; both are fascinating and crucially important to our understanding of nature. — Sean Carroll

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. — George Orwell

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call 'God's birds' because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known? — George Eliot

Their characteristics are well-known. They're beautiful
when they're not astoundingly ugly. They're both goddesses for men to worship, and demons for them to flee. They adore children, sometimes to the point of unhealthy obsession. They have a strong association with nature, from which they're often assumed to draw magical power. Their anger is a terrible thing to behold, and all the more fearsome because anything can spark it; the rules by which these creatures operate are not those of rational men. They are creatures of fanciful whim, and they never, ever, can be understood.
I'm talking, of course, about women. — Marie Brennan

Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent. Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed cannot be regarded as evil. — Simon Winchester

... there is no quicker way of growing old than undue indulgence in regular habits. Indeed it seems probable that the reason why so many people die sooner than they should is because they have organised their lives in such a way that there is nothing left for them to do. Change, as is well-known, is not only a law of Nature, but the very breath of existence. And if you rule change out of your life there no longer seems any reason why you should continue altogether. — Franklin Lushington