It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

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.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

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.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

If you want to become fully mature in the Lord, you must learn to love truth. Otherwise, you will always leave open a door of deception for the enemy to take what is meant to be yours.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Man is by nature a political animal.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

I mean, Hawaii is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful places.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.

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.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.