How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.

People do not make wars; governments do.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it’s a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.

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

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I’m telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.