Nature is immovable.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCNature resolves everything into its component elements, but annihilates nothing.
—Lucretius, c. 57 BCA righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.
—The BibleThose things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art.
—Cicero, c. 45 BCNature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne, 1635Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1790When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
—Chinese proverbA tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?
—Ronald Reagan, 1965Men argue, nature acts.
—Voltaire, 1764We never are definitely right; we can only be sure we are wrong.
—Richard P. Feynman, 1965God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.
—Martin LutherAnimals hear about death for the first time when they die.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819Nature’s rules have no exceptions.
—Herbert Spencer, 1851Nature never breaks her own laws.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.
—George Herbert, 1640I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.
—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686Drive out nature with a pitchfork, and she will always come back.
—Horace, c. 25 BCThe temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
—Basho, c. 1690If people think Nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.
—Kurt Vonnegut, 1988