Archive

Quotes

A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and oneself anew.

—Marcel Proust, c. 1920

Nature never jests.

—Albrecht von Haller, 1751

There is something stirring in the way civilization gapes like a savage at the achievements of nature.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

—Horace, 20 BC

The sea is mother-death, and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.

—Anne Sexton, 1971

The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.

—John Henry Poynting, 1899

There is a time to battle against nature, and a time to obey her. True wisdom lies in making the right choice.

—Arthur C. Clarke, 1979

It is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.

—Wendell Berry, 1985

It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.

—James Hutton, 1795

The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil-fuel use.

—Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2008

We seek with our human hands to create a second nature in the natural world.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.

—Kalidasa, c. 450

It’s only the futility of the first flood that prevents God from sending a second.

—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1794