44 Quotes About Nature

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf of springtime.

Doth not all nature around me praise God? If I were silent, I should be an exception to the universe. Doth not the thunder praise Him as it rolls like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not the mountains praise Him when the woods upon their summits wave in adoration? Doth not the lightning write His name in letters of fire? Hath not the whole earth a voice? And shall I, can I, silent be?

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts: the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seem to impart a quiet to the mind.

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

God's miracles are to be found in nature itself; the wind and waves, the wood that becomes a tree - all of these are explained biologically, but behind them is the hand of God.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

One thing is unmistakable: the soul is affected by outside influences, but not the spirit. For example, when the soul is provided with beautiful scenery, serene nature, inspiring music, or many other phenomena pertaining to the external world, it can be moved instantly and respond strongly. Not so the spirit. Hence those that are genuinely spiritual can be active whether or not their soul has feeling or their body has strength.

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

By the light of nature we see God as a God above us, by the light of the law we see Him as a God against us, but by the light of the gospel we see Him as Emmanuel, God with us.

Look at that beautiful butterfly, and learn from it to trust in God. One might wonder where it could live in tempestuous nights, in the whirlwind, or in the stormy day; but I have noticed it is safe and dry under the broad leaf while rivers have been flooded, and the mountain oaks torn up from their roots.

The Reign of Law has gradually crept into every department of Nature, transforming knowledge everywhere into Science. The process goes on, and Nature slowly appears to us as one great unity, until the borders of the Spiritual World are reached.

With Nature as the symbol of all of harmony and beauty that is known to man, must we still talk of the supernatural, not as a convenient word, but as a different order of world, ... where the Reign of Mystery supersedes the Reign of Law?

Nature hath appointed the twilight, as a bridge, to pass us out of night into day.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

There is a signature of wisdom and power impressed on the works of God, which evidently distinguishes them from the feeble imitations of men.--Not only the splendor of the sun, but the glimmering light of the glowworm, proclaims his glory.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

If there be anything common to us by nature, it is the members of our corporeal frame; yet the apostle taught that these, guided by the spirit as its instruments, and obeying a holy will, become transfigured, so that, in his language, the body becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the meanest faculties, the lowest appetites, the humblest organs are ennobled by the spirit mind which guides them.

We fail to praise the ceaseless ministry of the great inanimate world around us only because its kindness is unobtrusive. Nature is always noiseless. All her greatest gifts are given in secret. And we forget how truly every good and perfect gift comes from without, and from above, because no pause in her changeless beneficence teaches us the sad lessons of deprivation.

A fair reputation is a plant delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night, like the gourd of the prophet, but like that gourd, it may perish in a night.

What is outside the system of self-giving is no earth, nor nature, nor 'ordinary life', but simply and solely Hell. Yet even Hell derives from this law such reality as it has.

There is a sense of solidity about a Law of Nature which belongs to nothing else in the world. Here, at last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing sure; one thing outside ourselves, unbiased, unprejudiced, uninfluenced by like or dislike, by doubt or fear... This more than anything else makes one eager to see the Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual Sphere.

The sweet smell of lilac trees, the warmth of the summer's breeze tell me you are not far away.

If we neglect almost any of the domestic animals, they will rapidly revert to wild and worthless forms. Now, the same thing exactly would happen in the case of you or me. Why should man be an exception to any of the laws of nature?

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?

To go outside what we call Nature is not to go outside Environment. Nature, the natural Environment, is only a part of Environment. There is another large part, which, though some profess to have no correspondence with it, is not on that account unreal, or even unnatural. The mental and moral world is unknown to the plant. But it is real.

The modernists started with the assumption that science is the only source of sure knowledge, that nature is all there is, and thus that morality is merely a human invention that can be changed to meet changing circumstances in an evolving world.

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

The grandest operations, both in nature and grace, are the most silent and imperceptible. The shallow brook babbles in its passage and is heard by everyone; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen. The storm rages and alarms, but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are but partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and is the very life of large portions of the earth. And these are pictures of the operations of grace in the church and in the soul.

The work begun by Nature is finished by the Supernatural--as we are wont to call the higher natural. And as the veil is lifted by Christianity it strikes men dumb with wonder. For the goal of Evolution is Jesus Christ.

It is impossible to believe that the amazing successions of revelations in the domain of Nature, during the last few centuries, at which the world has all but grown tired wondering, are to yield nothing for the higher life.

Nature gives every evidence of being intelligently designed.

Heat water to the highest degree, you cannot make wine of it; it is water still; so, let morality be raised to the highest, it is nature still; it is old Adam put in a better dress.

The animal world and the plant world are the same world. They are different parts of one environment. And the natural and spiritual are likewise one.

Grace will not suffer a vacuum, any more than nature.

The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature. Evil is evil because it is unnatural. A vine which should bear olive-berries - an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased. An unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.

While the laws of nature can be considered as an expression of the mind of God ... there is no logic in supposing that they exhaust the divine potential in regard to physical events.

Nature is but a name for an effect, whose cause is God.

Our higher feelings move our animal nature; and our animal nature, irritated, may call back a semblance of those emotions; but the whole difference between nobleness and baseness lies in the question, whether the feeling begins from below or above.

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

The Life of the senses, high and low, may perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of thought may find a large complement in surrounding things. But the higher thought, and the conscience, and the religious Life, can only perfect themselves in God.