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The sky is the
part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of
pleasing man.
-- John Ruskin
1819-1900, British Critic,
Social Theorist
Nature, who
for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general
equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of
virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in
accordance with what she requires.
-- Marquis De Sade
1740-1814, French Author
From our
earliest hour we have been taught that the thought of the
heart, the shaping of the rain-cloud, the amount of wool
that grows on a sheep's back, the length of a drought, and
the growing of the corn, depend on nothing that moves
immutable, at the heart of all things; but on the changeable
will of a changeable being, whom our prayers can alter. To
us, from the beginning, Nature has been but a poor plastic
thing, to be toyed with this way or that, as man happens to
please his deity or not; to go to church or not; to say his
prayers right or not; to travel on a Sunday or not. Was it
possible for us in an instant to see Nature as she is --the
flowing vestment of an unchanging reality?
-- Olive Schreiner
If you live
according to the dictates of nature, you will never be poor;
if according to the notions of man, you will never be rich.
-- Seneca
4 B.C. – 65 A.D.,
Spanish-born Roman Statesman, philosopher
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Only
nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault
the punishment it deserves.
-- Percy Bysshe
Shelley
1792-1822, British
Poet
See
one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and
see all.
-- Socrates
BC 469-399, Greek
Philosopher of Athens
Nature
in America has always been suspect, on the
defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America,
every specimen becomes a relic.
-- Susan Sontag
1933-, American
Essayist
Man is
a complex being; he makes the deserts bloom and
lakes die.
-- Gil Stern
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