In general Mankind, since the improvement of Cookery, eat about twice as much as Nature requires.
Human nature is a vast, dark forest.
Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child’s deepest secrets.
Every relation, every gradation of nature is incalculably precious, but only to the soul which is poised upon itself, and to whom no loss, no change, can bring dull discord, for it is in harmony with the central soul.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it.
When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear.
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
Whatever is natural admits of variety.[Alternate translation:]All that is natural is varied.[Mais tout ce qui est naturel est varié.]
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?[Qu’est-ce que l’Art, monsieur? c’est la nature concentrée.]
