Nature is the art of God.

—Thomas Browne, 1635

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.

—The Bible

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1790

Nature resolves everything into its component elements, but annihilates nothing.

—Lucretius, c. 57 BC

A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.

—George Herbert, 1640

Nature’s rules have no exceptions.

—Herbert Spencer, 1851

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

—Basho, c. 1690

Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819

Drive out nature with a pitchfork, and she will always come back. 

—Horace, c. 25 BC

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

—George Eliot, 1857

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

—Ronald Reagan, 1965

Those things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art.

—Cicero, c. 45 BC

If people think Nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

—Kurt Vonnegut, 1988

Nature is immovable.

—Euripides, c. 415 BC

We never are definitely right; we can only be sure we are wrong.

—Richard P. Feynman, 1965

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.

—Martin Luther

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

—Chinese proverb

I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.

—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686

Men argue, nature acts.

—Voltaire, 1764

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500