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natural quotes

  • Day by day natural science accumulates new riches† The true system of the World has been recognized, developed and perfected† Everything has been discussed and analyzed, or at least mentioned.

    -Jean le Rond d' Alembert
      Elements of Philosophy.

  • La femme est naturelle, c'est-a'  -dire abominable. Woman is natural, that is, abominable.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Mon coeur mis a'   nu, pt.5.

  • Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptable rights, rhetorical nonsensenonsense upon stilts.

    -Jeremy Bentham
    Anarchical Fallacies. Collected in  J Bowring (ed)  Works (1838^43), vol.2.

  • Men are grown mechanical in head and in the heart, as well as in the hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force of any kind.

    -Thomas Carlyle
      Signs of the Times.

  • It's as large as life and twice as natural!

    -Dodgson
    Through the Looking-Glass, ch.7,'The Lion and the Unicorn'.

  • Learn then to dance, you that are princes born, And lawful lords of earthly creatures all; Imitate them, and thereof take no scorn, (For this new art to them is natural) And imitate the stars celestial. For when pale death your vital twist shall sever, Your better parts must dance with them forever.

    - SirJohn Davies
      Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, stanza 60.

  • Whate'er he did was done with so much ease, In him alone,'twas natural to please.

    -John Dryden
    Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.27^8.

  • I must confess I am a fop in my heart; ill customs influence my very senses, and I have been so used to affectation that without the help of the air of the court what is natural cannot touch me.

    - Sir George Etherege
      Letter to Mr Poley,12  Jan.

  • Les mouvements les plus naturels, et les plus ordinaires, sont ceux qui se font le moins sentir; cela est vrai jusque dans la morale. Le mouvement de l'amour-propre nous est si naturel que, le plus souvent, nous ne le sentons pas. The most natural and ordinary movements are those which are the least felt; this is also true in morals.Pride is so natural to us that, most often, we never feel it.

    - Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
      Entretiens sur la pluralite   des mondes, Premier soir.

  • A naked lunch is natural to us, we eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don't hide the madness.

    - Allen Ginsberg
      'On Burroughs'  Work'.

  • Philip is a living example of natural selection. He was as fitted to survive in this modern world as a tapeworm in an intestine.

    - Sir William (Gerald) Golding
      Free Fall, ch.2.

  • On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      Of Garrick. Retaliation, l.101^2.

  • Better if he had said something natural like,'Jesus, here we are.' SeeArmstrong 30:78.

    - Sir Edmund Percival Hillary
      Criticizing Neil  Armstrong's premeditated words on first stepping onto the moon. Quoted in the Sunday Times.

  • I take these to be the seven great facts and doctrines concerning Godhis richness; his double action, natural and supernatural; his perfect freedom; his delightfulness; his otherness; his adorableness and his prevenience.

    - Friedrich von, Baron Hu«  gel
    The Life of Prayer (published1927).

  • An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.

    - Henry James
    Isabel  Archer. The Portrait of a Lady, ch.10.

  • There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and women to fill our day; But when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The Power of the Dog'.

  • We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances† Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of the superfluous causes.

    - Sir Isaac Newton
      Newton's First Rule of Reasoning in Philosophy. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (translated by Andrew Motte,1729).

  • Quand on voit le style naturel, on est tout e  tonne   et ravi, car on s'attendait de voir un auteur, et on trouve un homme. When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

    - Blaise Pascal
    c.1654^1662  Pense  es, no.29 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

  • The very power of science to hold knowledge as collective knowledge is founded upon a degree and a quality of trust which are arguably unparalleled elsewhere in our culture† Scientists know so much about the natural world by knowing so much about whom they can trust.

    - Steven Shapin
      A Social History ofTruth.

  • Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Getting Married, preface,'Hearth and Home'.

  • Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what doyoualwaysfind? Thatthestables arethereal centre of the household.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Lady Utterword. Heartbreak House, act 3.

  • La poe  sie est le langage naturel de tous les cultes. Poetry is the natural language of all religions.

    - Germaine Necker, Baronne de Stae«  l
      De l'Allemagne.

  • What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if Ilike oranything if Ilikebut notthere,thereisnothere there.

    - Gertrude Stein
      Everybody's Autobiography, ch.4.

  • Modern European culture is nothing but a culture of natural sciences.

    -SunYat-Sen or  SunYixian
      Speech, Nov, calling for a union of Japan and China to liberate Asia from European influence. Quoted in JohnWu Sun Yat-Sen:The Man and His Ideas (1971).

  • A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen.

    - Henry David Thoreau
      Journalentry,16 Nov. InBradfordTorrey and F H Allen (eds) TheJournals of Henry DavidThoreau (1906).

  • Pap warn't in a good humorso he was his natural self.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
      TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.6.

  • The beauty of the world is almost the only way by which we can allow God to penetrate us†the beauty of the world isthe commonest, easiest and most natural way of approach.

    - Simone Weil
    Attente de Dieu (translated asWaiting for God,1951).

  • What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there anotherTroy for her to burn?

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'No SecondTroy', l.6^12. Collected inThe Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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