Theme

Philosophy quotes about nature

Philosophy quotes about nature ask what the cosmos is, how humans belong in it, and whether “natural” can guide ethics or politics.

Why this theme matters

Nature may mean physical cosmos, living world, human nature, or a normative standard of what ought to be. Presocratics, Daoists, Stoics, and modern environmental thinkers share the word while disagreeing about its force.

In the history of philosophy

From Greek physis and Chinese ziran to Rousseau’s state of nature and contemporary ecology, the theme links metaphysics, ethics, and politics.

Thinkers in this collection

Heraclitus , Lucretius , Baruch Spinoza , Thomas Hobbes , Immanuel Kant , Arthur Schopenhauer , Henry David Thoreau , Ludwig Wittgenstein

Frequently asked questions

What do philosophers mean by nature?

They may mean the physical world, human dispositions, or a standard of right order—contexts decide which sense is in play.

Is living according to nature a Stoic idea?

Yes. Stoicism treats living in agreement with nature—as rational and social—as the ethical end, though “nature” is richly defined.

Where are philosophy quotes about nature?

This theme page gathers verified English passages on cosmos, life, and natural order.

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency.
  3. God, or Nature.
  4. [In the state of nature, the life of man is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  5. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  6. The world is my representation.
  7. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
  8. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical…He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
  9. Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.
  10. Nature's wealth has its bounds and is easy to procure; but the wealth of vain fancies recedes to an infinite distance.
  11. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
  12. Humans model themselves on earth; earth on heaven; heaven on the Way; and the Way on what is naturally so.
  13. When the springs dry up and fish are stranded together on land, they moisten one another with dampness and wet one another with foam — but better to forget one another in the rivers and lakes.
  14. Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.
  15. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
  16. the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
  17. Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.
  18. Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature.
  19. Relying on the heavenly pattern, I strike into the large gaps, guide through the large openings, and follow what is inherently so.
  20. Better to forget one another in the rivers and lakes than to moisten one another with foam when stranded.
  21. Does a dog have Buddha-nature? … Wu (No).
  22. Habit and nature come to completion together and transform with each other.
  23. All human beings by nature desire to know.
  24. What Heaven mandates is called nature; following nature is called the Way; cultivating the Way is called teaching.
  25. The cry of the flesh is not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold.
  26. the Love that moves the sun and the other stars
  27. Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
  28. The body is not a thing, it is a situation.
  29. To exist is to make oneself a lack of being; it is to cast oneself into the world.
  30. Moral evil is a kind of natural defect.
  31. There is no criterion for determining what is good for a human being that is independent of the nature of the human being.
  32. The individual is only able to find another individual as a living body and as a sensing, feeling, and willing I.
  33. Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and restored.
  34. To deny that things have natures and that from similar natures similar effects follow is to abolish reason and science together.
  35. By unaided reason Hayy rose to knowledge of the Necessary Existent, before any human teacher reached him.
  36. The whole system is founded on the notion of vital force. Pre-existing, anterior to being, it constitutes being.
  37. Fūdo means wind and earth — the natural environment of a given land.
  38. We discover ourselves in the cold — and in the same moment we discover the cold in ourselves — before any sharp division of subject and object.
  39. Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst.
  40. The Great Void has no physical form; it is the original substance of qi. Its gathering and dispersing are but the passing forms of change.
  41. There is no place in Buddhism for special effort. Just be ordinary: put on your clothes, eat your food, and lie down when you are tired.