Philip James Bailey Quotes

And nature must obey necessity.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows--it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.

Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are only consequences.

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

I don't do what I do willingly, but I have to do it.

You have the sense of touch because you need it.

I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.

Without rain, there would be no life.

What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.

… for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.

Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.

It is part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means - be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our own lives or the absence of meaning.

Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are merely necessities: there is no one who commands, no one whoobeys, no one who transgresses. Once you understand that there are no purposes, then you also understand that nothing is accidental: for it is only in a world of purposes that the word "accident" makes sense.

Even God is said to be unable to use force against necessity.

I have found nothing stronger than Necessity.

I have to act to live.

Necessity gives the law and does not itself receive it.

There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.