Human Nature × Nature

Human Nature and Nature

Browse 30 quotations catalogued under Human Nature with "nature" in the text or topic label.

30 quotes

This collection contains 30 quotations filed under Human Nature with "nature" in the quote text or topic label. These keyword matches offer a starting point for exploring Human Nature and Nature; they do not by themselves establish a shared argument or a historical connection between the authors.

The authors represented include Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Epictetus, and others. Read each quotation in its own context rather than assuming that these authors share a position.

One matching quotation reads: "The English have taught us that we were not one nation before and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We we…" The full quotation appears below.

Another matching quotation reads: "The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the s…" Compare the wording and surrounding context to decide how each passage relates to your question.

Use the quotation links to explore individual entries and the author links to visit their profiles on QuoteLineage. For broader reading beyond these keyword matches, explore all Human Nature quotes or the concept page for Nature.

30 Quotes on Human Nature and Nature

"The English have taught us that we were not one nation before and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired us. Our mode of life was the same. It was because we were one nation that they were able to establish one kingdom. Subsequently they divided us."

— Mahatma Gandhi

"The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things."

— Oscar Wilde

"Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience"

"In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles."

"Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love."

— Marcus Aurelius

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'"

— Martin Luther King Jr.

"What is called genius is the abundance of life and health."

— Henry David Thoreau

"There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

— Nelson Mandela

"If you would govern a state of a thousand chariots (a small-to-middle-size state), you must pay strict attention to business, be true to your word, be economical in expenditure and love the people. You should use them according to the seasons (i.e. You should not enlist farmers during seeding or harvest time)."

"He that in his studies wholly applies himself to labour and exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time, and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labour and exercise, only wanders and loses himself."

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."

— Thomas Jefferson

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you."

— Thomas Jefferson

"No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."

"Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides."

— Benjamin Franklin

"Begin to be now what you will be hereafter."

— William James

"Hitch your wagon to a star."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To begin an affair of that kind now, and carry it on so long a time in form, is by no means a proper plan ... whatever assurances I may give her in private of my esteem for her, or whatever assurances I may ask in return from her, depend on it"

— Thomas Jefferson

"If you would keep your Secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend."

— Benjamin Franklin

"Only the educated are free."

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."

— Baruch Spinoza

"Quality is not an act, it is a habit."

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."

— Winston Churchill

"You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last."

— Marcus Aurelius

"There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return."

— Marcus Aurelius

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

— Samuel Beckett

"But though all the general rules of art are founded only on experience and on the observation of the common sentiments of human nature, we must not imagine, that, on every occasion, the feelings of men will be conformable to these rules."

"We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people."

— Simone de Beauvoir

"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms."

"The Hegel Society of America"

— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"Such ... was the theory of the selection and struggle for existence as the basis of human progress. Such again, is Marx's theory, with regard to the gradual destruction of small private production by large capitalistic production... as an inevitable decree of fate. However unfounded such theories are, however contrary to all that is known and confessed by humanity, and however obviously immoral these may be, they are accepted with credulity, pass uncriticized, and are preached ... To this class belongs this astonishing theory of the Baungarten trinity — Goodness, Beauty and Truth — according to which it appears that the very best that can be done by the art of nations after 1900 years of Christian teaching is to choose as the ideal of their life that which was held by a small, semi-savage, slaveholding people who lived 2000 years ago, who imitated the nude human body extremely well, and erected buildings pleasing to the eye. Educated people write long, nebulous treatises on beauty as a member of the aesthetic trinity of beauty, truth, and goodness... and they all think that by pronouncing these sacrosanct words, they speak of something quite definite and solid... on which they can base their opinions. ... only for the purpose of justifying the false importance we attribute to an art that conveys every feeling, provided those feelings give us pleasure."

— Leo Tolstoy

Key thinkers on this theme

Mahatma Gandhi· Politics Oscar Wilde· Literature Mark Twain· Literature Epictetus· Philosophy Marcus Aurelius· Philosophy

Related ideas in Human Nature

All Human Nature quotes Explore the idea of Nature