It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.
Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul.
The sea a dark greenish blue like a fig.
I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.
I tell you that if natural bodies have it from nature to be moved by any movement, this can only be circular motion, nor is it possible that nature has given to any of its integral bodies a propensity to be moved by straight motion. I have many confirmations of this proposition, but for the present one alone suffices, which is this. I suppose the parts of the universe to be in the best arrangement, so that none is out of its place, which is to say that nature and God have perfectly arranged their structure. This being so, it is impossible for those parts to have it from nature to be moved in straight, or in other than circular motion, because what moves straight changes place, and if it changes place naturally, then it was at first in a place preternatural to it, which goes against the supposition. Therefore, if the parts of the world are well ordered, straight motion is superfluous and not natural, and they can only have it when some body is forcibly removed from its natural place, to which it would then return by a straight line, for thus it appears that a part of the earth does [move] when separated from its whole. I said "it appears to us," because I am not against thinking that not even for such an effect does nature make use of straight line motion.
The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history.
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock.
Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources.
The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.
The study of nature makes a man at last as remorseless as nature.