There is a little of everything, apparently, in nature, and freaks are common.[Il y a, paraîtil, de tout dans la nature et les lusus y abondent.]
Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos.
One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.
Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
Nature is beautiful because it looks like Art; and Art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like Nature.[Die Natur war schön, wenn sie zugleich als Kunst aussah; und die Kunst kann nur schön genannt werden, wenn wir uns bewußt sind, sie sei Kunst, und sie uns doch als Natur aussieht.]
Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or fall by its results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try another experiment.
It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.
It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
In presence of Nature’s grand convulsions, man is powerless.[Les colons avaient voulu lutter contre cet envahissement, ils l’avaient essayé, mais follement et inutilement, car l’homme est désarmé devant ces grands cataclysmes.]
