Pliny the Elder Quotes

God gave unto the Animals A wisdom past our power to see: Each knows innately how to live, Which we must learn laboriously.

As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work - we begin life as little scientists.

He lived according to the laws of instinct and of the innocent and wise conduct that nature impressed upon him in the cradle.

Justice is inextricably linked to revenge, which is both morally right and a deeply internalized instinct as innate to man as breathing, having sex, falling in love, and making war.

I rely a great deal on animal instincts.

Nature is stronger than education.

All the learning in the world cannot replace instinct.

A little pure wildness is the one great present want, both of men and sheep.

We considered behaving, but it's against our nature.

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.

Who you are and what you know when you are born is everything that you need to know to thrive. You are born with a sense of self and a sense of wanting self to feel good and the mechanisms to bring it about.

There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.

You should always trust the instincts of children.

Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck.

You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.

This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.

But you've changed,' I whisper. 'Haven't you?' It is the scorpian's nature to sting. Just because he has no opportunity doesn't mean that he cannot.

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

Nobody teaches life anything.

Lovers are fools, but Nature makes them so.

The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.

The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.