Citium Zeno Quotes

Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.

Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.

Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body? This first we ought to determine.

In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.

Science, it is said, no doubt has ameliorated the material conditions of human life, but is powerless to solve those moral and philosophical questions that interest cultured people so deeply.

That's a central part of philosophy, of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals.

Mencius said that human nature is good. I disagree with that.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

One of the things I believe in is a sense of human nature.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

There is a much more exact correspondence between the natural and moral world than we are apt to take notice of.

The nature of things is dharma.

I look out of this window and I think this is a cosmos, this is a huge creation, this is one small corner of it. The trees and birds and everything else and I'm part of it. I didn't ask to be put here, I've been lucky in finding myself here.

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself.

What a glorious title, Nature, a veritable stroke of genius to have hit upon. It is more than a cosmos, more than a universe. It includes the seen as well as the unseen, the possible as well as the actual, Nature and Nature's God, mind and matter. I am lost in admiration of the effulgent blaze of ideas it calls forth.

This world... ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.

Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. All creation is life, movement, work.

We choose to believe that the granite is alive. If life is movement, then rock - with its atoms flying around like stars in cosmos - is alive.

Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel?

Never can custom conquer nature, for she is ever unconquered.

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