Nature Quotations | Page 5

One learns more from listening than speaking. And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.

That human beings seek their own well-being and that of those close to them is not an especially provocative discovery. What is important is that this universal aspect of human nature persists no matter what economic system is in place; it merely expresses itself in different forms.

The serendipitous nature of hypertext links is just brilliant for a curious mind. I love it.

Since Socrates and Plato first speculated on the nature of the human mind, serious thinkers through the ages - from Aristotle to Descartes, from Aeschylus to Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman - have thought it wise to understand oneself and one's behavior.

I think Whitman more than any other poet possessed the gift of revealing to others the beauty of everything around us, the beauty of nature, the beauty of human beings.

Read nature; nature is a friend to truth.

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.

Love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger.

Winter is nature's way of saying, 'Up yours.'

I don't know David Cameron very well. I like him. I think you can judge a book by its cover - whoever said you can't is wrong - that's the whole point of nature giving us intuition, instinct and so on. I think the cover is pretty good.

I love acting. I've been doing it since I was 16, and it's in my nature. It's the thing I do best. But as much as I love acting, I love cinema more. I always had a thing about creating images.

I like to let my work ethic speak for itself, just things of that nature, like the way I go about practice and show these guys how to do it.

Winemakers have to adapt to what they're given by nature: the vines, the fruit, the soil and the weather.

I read all of the books by Tolkien, including 'The Hobbit,' when I was in my twenties, and his deep love of nature and all things green resonates deeply with me.

I enjoyed my 20s - they were torturous and beautiful. I learned so much about myself and about life and about the nature of people.

By nature, I'm a person who always says that whatever I've done, I could've done better. But I don't dwell on it because I'm waiting for the next time something happens and try to believe that my past experience will have helped to educate me in terms of how I deal with future ones.

I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.

Man, I'm a conspiracy theorist by nature. You can't experience the federal penal system and not be somewhat skeptical.

It often happens that when a person possesses a particular ability to an extraordinary degree, nature makes up for it by leaving him or her incompetent in every other department.

A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine.

Like in nature, I like things which are based on a few simple principles, even though their manifestation can be very rich.

I have a deep fascination with human nature, with all its virtues and all its defects.

Fortunately, nature is as generous with its problems as Nobel with his fortune. The more we know, the more aware we are of what we know not.

I became interested in photography during my first visit to the United States. I was a student at a university in Holland. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the American West. That was when I learned about the tradition of nature in American photography.

I told myself, 'When I grow up, I want to make pictures that can inspire and nourish people.' Immediately, when I was 10, I started photographing nature. I built a darkroom. My first really good darkroom, not just down in the cellar, was when I was 14.

The nature of creativity is to make space for things to happen... We can drive it out with our busyness and plans.

I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.

We live on a planet that is amazing, beautiful, and full of wonder but not protected from powerful destructive forces of nature. We are capable of doing wonderful and selfless things but also self-absorbed and harmful things. This is the world we live in.

I find that nothing but very close and intense application to subjects of a scientific nature now seems at all to keep my imagination from running wild, or to stop up the void which seems to be left in my mind from a want of excitement.

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.

The quicker we humans learn that saving open space and wildlife is critical to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we'll start thinking of doing something about it.

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing. We have not fully recognized this process of leaping ahead, however, in part because textbooks tend to tame revolutions...They describe the advances as if they had been logical in their day, not all shocking.

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.

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

There is the sky, which is all men's together.

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

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.

It's either I have to be in the trees or in the ocean, otherwise I lose my mind. I have to get connected with nature, otherwise I don't feel very good. And that's what life's about, feeling good, so nature knows best for me.

We seek for truth in ourselves; in our neighbours, and in its essential nature. We find it first in ourselves by severe self scrutiny, then in our neighbours by compassionate indulgence, and, finally, in its essential nature by that direct vision which belongs to the pure in heart.

Where there are large powers with little ambition, nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

You must in all Airs follow the strength, spirit, and disposition of the horse, and do nothing against nature; for art is but to set nature in order, and nothing else.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

'O sleep, O gentle sleep,' I thought gratefully, 'Nature's soft nurse!'

The nature of the beast is that film is a director's medium. It's not a Tracy Letts play, it's a John Wells film. 'August: Osage County,' as a play, is done. Written. On the shelf. It'll be performed in its entirety for years.

What I want to do with my filmmaking is help kids experience the truth and wisdom of nature no matter where they are, whether or not they have the opportunity to go to a national park.

That's human nature - the ups and downs.

I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

I think if there was no violence in our world, there would be no violence in film. Violence is a part of human nature, and obviously it's a troublesome part of human nature. You always have responsibilities when you portray violence in what angle you put down on that scene.

We are acknowledging the close personal nature of our 10 years at war and the strong bonds of fidelity that Marines have for one another, especially for those fellow Marines who we have lost.

I'm an optimist. You can't be an entrepreneur if you're not essentially an optimist, so I'm an optimist by nature.

The longer you remain silent, the longer you don't turn over documents, a presumption begins to build that you're withholding something. That's human nature. That may not be a legal presumption, but that's a common sense presumption.

There is something uniquely American about the motel: It speaks to the transient nature of America itself, one enabled and encouraged by our roads and highways.

From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own.

I'm constantly investigating nature - nature, meaning everything.

I'm acting for the same reasons I wanted to become a diplomat. I've thought about it a lot and concluded that I wanted to become a diplomat because it was a way to explore human nature. For the same reason that at one point in college, I wanted to be a sociologist.

Ever since I was a small child, I've had this feeling - it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious - that if everyone's going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

Any skills that I have, I couldn't really make money with them. I would like to think that maybe I would be doing something in psychology or something of that nature because I love that vein of medicine - the getting down and getting nitty-gritty.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.

And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man.

High Romanticism shows you nature in all its harsh and lovely metamorphoses. Flood, fire and quake fling us back to the primal struggle for survival and reveal our gross dependency on mammoth, still mysterious forces.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

It's not in my nature to chop people's heads off, per se, or rob a bank or any crazy thing I've done on screen. I'm just comfortable reading a book or spending time with my wife and my daughter or watching the fight on TV with the fellas.

I don't sleep well. I'm a very nervous - by my nature - anxious, almost paranoid person and reporter.

The scientist's inquiry into the causes of things is providing an ever more extensive understanding of nature.

The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.

It is my nature to thin where others read.

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours.

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

Being in nature is very important to me. I'm not a glamour puss.

Sensitive, responsive, eagerly welcomed everywhere, the drama, holding the mirror up to nature, by laughter and by tears reveals to mankind the world of men.

Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.

There was a Republican majority of the Senate, and it tempered the nature of the nominations being made.

The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that.

My tendency in life is to like movies that deal with heavy stuff, but it's my nature.

I usually don't like to 'spoon feed' my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.

It's hard to be a clubhouse guy without being a great guy. I mean, the nature of the job is, you know, you're picking up dirty clothes and you're doing all the tasks that the players - that nobody else wants to do.

What he's done is recognise the cinematic nature of the book. It's beautifully realised - it's a beat film.

I am not a religious person myself, but I did look for nature. I had spent my first sabbatical in New York City. Looked for something different for the second one. Europe and the U.S. didn't really feel enticing because I knew them too well. So Asia it was. The most beautiful landscapes I had seen in Asia were Sri Lanka and Bali.

I love all of the ecosystems - mountains, deserts, rainforests. They're beautiful, and nature has so many different flavors to it.

If nothing else, the act of reaching a milestone often serves to reveal a superstar's true nature.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

As soon as we can wrest from Nature the secret of the internal structure of the compounds produced by her, chemical science can then even surpass Nature by producing compounds as variations of the natural ones, which the living cell is unable to construct.

This product is a compromise, and the nature of compromise is that you don't get everything you want.

As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents - electric wave motion - will have the sway.

I am, as are most writers, just hugely obsessive, and so are many of my closest friends, who tend to be writers or scientists. It's a trait of human nature that I'm particularly in touch with. So I tend to project it onto my characters.

Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand opposed to natural institutions.

The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.

Unfortunately, it is human nature for us to only learn and grow from a place of emptiness. It's hard to learn when we are winning and on top of the world.

Part of making any endeavour is that each one has its own special problems. It's the nature of the process.

The common Notions of Liberty are not from School Divines, but from Nature.