Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

If you drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will soon find a way back.

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

Drive Nature from your door with a pitchfork, and she will return again and again.

Nature always springs to the surface and manages to show what she is. It is vain to stop or try to drive her back. She breaks through every obstacle, pushes forward, and at last makes for herself a way.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Custom, that is before all law; Nature, that is above all art.

That human beings seek their own well-being and that of those close to them is not an especially provocative discovery. What is important is that this universal aspect of human nature persists no matter what economic system is in place; it merely expresses itself in different forms.

Economists, firstly, regard only one part of man's nature, and treat him simply as a money-making animal; secondly, they disregard the influence of custom, and only take account of competition.

Where a bad custom has been in existence for any length of time, most people grow to regard it as part of the order of nature.

Custom is our nature …

You see in moments of duress not only the darkest parts of human nature but also the brightest, the most noble.

Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature.

He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument

At what point in my struggle with nature will nature finally give up?

If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn.

The end may be defined as life in accordance with nature or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe.

We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

Human pride is a strange thing; it cannot easily be suppressed, and if you stop up hole A will peep forth again in a twinkling from another hole B, and if this is closed it is ready to come out at hole C, and so on.

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque revenit. You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will nevertheless come back.

You must be aware that most men (and also not only a few women) are by nature not monogamous. This nature makes itself even more forceful when tradition and circumstance stand in an individual's way.

We consider the animals to be lower, and to me, that makes no sense at all. If you look at a tree or a mushroom or a squirrel, it's perfectly in tune with itself. It has no problem being exactly what it is, and it does what it's meant to do without any complaints or problems. Because we create all these problems in being, we think we're somehow higher than the animals. But it's we humans who have a difficult time even caring for our children, or anything.

Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.