Great Throughts Treasury

"It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power which has anywhere a being in nature." - David Hume

"Look around this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children." - David Hume

"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behavior." - David Hume

"So that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any ties between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life. But there still remains one method of avoiding this conclusion, and one source which we have not yet examined." - David Hume

"Improvement is nature." - James Henry Leigh Hunt

"The mission of art is to represent nature; not to imitate her." - William Morris Hunt

"Cognition is, after all, only human cognition, bound up with human intellectual forms, and unfit to reach the very nature of things, to reach things in themselves." - Edmund Husserl, fully Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl

"We possess a hidden higher self, the spark of divinity within the soul, which reflects this transcendental reality in our lives. By fulfilling certain necessary conditions, such as making ourselves more loving and compassionate, we can clear away the mental and emotional static that separates us from this inner reality, enabling the higher self to assume a central, guiding role in our lives. This awakening - called enlightenment, deliverance, or salvation in the various traditions - is the goal or purpose of human life. When we achieve this complete transformation of consciousness, we awaken from our limited, often painful condition and reconnect with our true nature." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"Education: To be at home in all lands and ages; to count Nature as a familiar acquaintance and Art an intimate friend; to gain a standard for the appreciation of other men's work and the criticism of one's own; to carry the keys of the world's library in one's pocket, and feel its resources behind one in whatever task he undertakes; to make hosts of friends among the men of one's own age who are the leaders in all walks of life; to lose oneself in general enthusiasms and co-operate with others for common ends." - William De Witt Hyde

"Nature takes away any faculty that is not used." - William Ralph Inge

"It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dullness to maturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation." - Washington Irving

"Instead of production, primarily, we have to think of sustainability. Instead of dominating nature, we have to acknowledge that nature is our source and best teacher. Instead of understanding the world in parts, we need to think about the whole." - Wes Jackson

"You don’t gain faith, you discover it and you direct it. The issue is not how much faith you have, but where your faith is invested. You have faith on many different levels and in many different ways, but its most perfect expression is in your spiritual nature." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

"Nature is but the echo of the soul, and images nothing therefore of the Divine creation and providence which is not primarily impressed by the soul." - Henry James, Sr.

"Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which to feel a sympathy" - William James

"Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts... It is a beautiful work of nature, like an eagle or a high sunrise." - Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson

"Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness." -

"It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy without physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art." -

"Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name poverty to the want of superfluities." -

"Nature never gives everything at once." -

"No man is by nature the property of another." -

"Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have sores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation." -

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to see happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove." -

"There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government." -

"Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites." -

"All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all ego-hood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral... Death is psychologically as important as birth... Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Nature and wisdom never are at strife." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

"Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

"Change challenges, relieves, frustrates, threatens, saddens or exhilarates us. Mainly it forces us to grow. It is the mechanism through which nature ensures evolution and the way God calls us home. It scares away our illusions about ourselves and others." - Gloria D. Karpinski

"I who am blind can give one hint to those who see - one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object yhou want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful." -

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." -

"The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, like they who lick the honey from a razor’s edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: turn your attention within, my heart friends." - Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche or Nyoshul Khenpo Jamyang Dorje

"I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up the "oughtness" that forever confronts him." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what you respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose." - Charles Kingsley

"Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbors." - Rudyard Kipling

"In the business of life, Man is the only product. And there is only one direction in which man can possibly develop if he is to make a better living or yield a bigger dividend to himself, to his race, to nature or to God. He must grow in knowledge, wisdom, kindliness and understanding." - V. C. Kitchen, fully Victor C. Kitchen

"Wisdom is alone, but a lonely path does not lead to wisdom. Isolation is death, and wisdom is not found in withdrawal. There is no path to wisdom, for all paths are separative, exclusive. In their very nature, paths can only lead to isolation, though these isolations are called unity, the whole, the one, and so end is as the means. The means is not separate from the goal, the “what should be.” Wisdom comes with the understanding of one’s relationship with the field, with the passer-by, with the fleeting thought. To withdraw, to isolate oneself in order to find, is to put an end to discovery. Relationship leads to an aloneness that is not of isolation. There must be an aloneness, not of the enclosing mind, but of freedom. The complete is the alone, and incompleteness seeks the way of isolation." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"When the Copernican Revolution superseded the ancient Polemic world view, the earth took its rightful place as one planet among many. Man was no longer the center of the universe and though his self-image was deflated, he grew in maturity. In the same way, we must take our rightful place in nature - not as its self-centered and profligate "master" with the divine right of kings to exploit and despoil, but as one species living in harmony with the whole." - R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

"Bounded in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who has a recollection of heaven." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

"Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature - compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

"Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature." -

"Because the forms of human feeling are much more congruent with musical forms than with the forms of language, music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth that language cannot approach." -

"Do not see with your eyes, don't hear with your ears, don't think with your mind, embrace the primal one, no knowledge, no self, go with nature, participate in nature, be one with nature and a long life will come naturally." -

"It is the Child that sees the primordial secret in Nature and it is the child of ourselves we return to. The child within us is simple and daring enough to live the Secret." -

"Nature is not benevolent; with ruthless indifference she makes all things serve their purposes." -

"The principles of music and wood carving are alike -- when a wood carving is finished, it has been created at the expense of all the wood that has been carved away. Only the music of nature is complete and undiminished." -

"We lose our carefree nature by separating our minds into cubicles and stuffing them full of knowledge. We should strive to break these boundaries and transcend knowledge." -

"We should always presume the disease to be curable, until its own nature prove it otherwise." - Peter Mere Latham