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Natural Quotes

“Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.”

“The man who has struggled bravely with the passions of the body, has fought ably against unclean spirits, and has expelled from his soul the conceptual images they provoke, should pray for a pure heart to be given him and for a spirit of integrity to be renewed within him (cf. Ps. 51:10). In other words, he should pray that by grace he may be completely emptied of evil thoughts and filled with divine thoughts, so that he may become a spiritual world of God, splendid and vast, wrought from moral, natural and theological forms of contemplation.”

“I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.”

“All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces.”

Action Science Force Understanding Natural Perfect Moral Technology Achieve Science And Technology

Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays

Source: Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays

“Public morals are natural complement of all laws they are by themselves an entire code.”

Law Politics Natural Moral Power Code Complement

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte

“I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue.”

People Feels Mean Sometimes Done Action Wish Natural Moral Principles Virtue Trouble Havens Prove Shame Like Me Wicked Frank Virtuous Remorse Particles Humbug Owning It

Author:Louisa May Alcott

“Nothing can better express the feelings of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel Kant's words: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the stars above me and the moral law within me."... Would he, who did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the heavens?”

Knows World Mind Two Feelings Law Given Heaven Stars Natural Moral Evolution Scientist Unity Two Things Awe Organisms Shocked Laws Of Nature Moral Law

Author:Konrad Lorenz

“The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.”

Should Children Natural Moral Elements Stress Lays Motive Spheres Domain Tangible Realist

Book:The Moral Judgement of the Child

Source: The Moral Judgement of the Child

“The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.”

Humans Kind Littles Philosophy Turns Natural Perfect Results Moral Ignorance Weakness Observation Spite Portions Blindness Metaphysical Endeavour Elude

Book:Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects

Source: Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects

“I HAVE no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary.”

Source: Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences

“Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man?”

Source: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

“The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws.”

Law Politics Natural Wealth Ability Results Moral Economy Economic Equal Rate Factors Liberalism Concentration Vary Economic Freedom Being Equal Concentration Of Wealth

Book:The Lessons of History

Source: The Lessons of History

“An economic system can remain viable only so long as society has mechanisms to counter abuses of either state or market power and the erosion of the natural, social, and moral capital that such abuses commonly exacerbate.”

Long States Social Natural Moral Economic Abuse Mechanism Economic Systems Erosion

Book:When Corporations Rule the World

Source: When Corporations Rule the World

“There are so many intellectual and moral angels battling for rationalism, good citizenship, and pure spirituality; so many and such eminent ones, so very vocal and authoritative! The poor devil in man needs all the support and advocacy he can get. The artist is his natural champion. When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.”

Source: Collected Works: Do what you will

“Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness.”

Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan

“I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.”

Mind Mean Art Facts Natural Secret Moral Genius Please Intellect Profession Inferiority

Book:The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1845-1846

Source: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1845-1846

“there is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried. I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are not only more fortunate but in some way more moral than you are.”

People Way Shows Natural Moral Married Fortunate Hostility Singles Unmarried

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity.”

Men World Way Two Ideas Spiritual Law Poetry Natural Moral Magic Movement Inspired Conviction Poetry Is Inward Two Ways Felicity Profundity Spiritual Nature Physiognomy

Book:Essays in Criticism

Source: Essays in Criticism

“A tendency to resume the same mode of action at stated times is peculiarly the characteristic of the nervous system; and on this account regularity is of great consequence in exercising the moral and intellectual power. All nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods; and the natural inclination to sleep at the approach of night is another instance of the same fact.”

“Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.”

Stills Facts Religion Natural Moral Progress Identity Creeds Dogma Supplies

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

“Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.”

Men World Wells Has Beens States Imagination Natural Moral Virtue Mediocrity Parallels

Book:The Rambler

Source: The Rambler

“The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence.”

Ifs Men Two Soul Whole Natural Quality Moral Opinion Virtue Acquire Faculty Disposition Prudence Cleverness Forming Opinions

Author:Aristotle

“All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful.”

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“No member of the faithful could possibly deny that the Church is competent in her magisterium to interpret the natural moral law.”

Law Natural Church Moral Members Deny Faithful Competent Moral Law

Author:Pope Paul VI

“People generally don't suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who've endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.”

People World Soul Suffering Natural Moral Rate Soldier Trauma Disaster Combat Symptoms Ptsd Atrocities Natural Disaster Depraved

Author:David Brooks

“We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.”

Natural Moral Poet Scientist Pantheism Monotheism Polytheism

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.”

“Forgiving presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting not in the natural way we forget yesterday's weather, but in the way of the great "in spite of" that says: I forget although I remember. Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily. I don't refer to a solemn act of asking for and offering forgiveness. Such rituals as sometimes occur between parents and children, or friends, or man and wife, are often acts of moral arrogance on the one part and enforced humiliation on the other. But I speak of the lasting willingness to accept him who has hurt us.”

“The child's personality is a product of slow gradual growth. His nervous system matures by stages and natural sequences. He sits before he stands; he babbles before he talks; he fabricates before he tells the truth; he draws a circle before he draws a square; he is selfish before he is altruistic; he is dependent on others before he achieves dependence on self. All of his abilities, including his morals, are subject to laws of growth. The task of child care is not to force him into a predetermined pattern but to guide his growth.”

Source: Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School (From the Former Clinic of Child Development, School of Medicine at Yale University)

“The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral.It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases.”

Natural Attitude Moral Dangerous Danger Taste Degrees Judgment Intellectual Conscious Increase Monsters Unconscious Aesthetic Entity

Book:The practice of psychotherapy

Source: The practice of psychotherapy

“Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”

Doe War Dream Religion Natural Moral Crime Example Morality Civilization Ethics Weak Aids Significant Conclusion Our Time Our Dreams Maintaining Warrants Savagery Moral Life

Book:The Lessons of History

Source: The Lessons of History

“If we are told a man is religious we still ask what are his morals? But if we hear at first that he has honest morals, and is a man of natural justice and good temper, we seldom think of the other question, whether he be religious and devout.”

Ifs Thinking Men Firsts Stills Asks Natural Religious Justice Moral Honest Morality Temper Natural Justice

Author:Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

“We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God's family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.”

“The forces that are driving mankind toward unity and peace are deep-seated and powerful. They are material and natural, as well as moral and intellectual.”

Wells Force Peace Natural Powerful Moral Mankind Materials Intellectual Unity Driving

Author:Arthur Henderson