Animals and Nature

When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.

The earth is moved from its position by the weight of a tiny bird resting upon it.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.

Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them.

The variety of color in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.

Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another.

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Weight is caused by one element being situated in another; and it moves by the shortest line towards its centre, not by its own choice, not because the centre draws it to itself, but because the other intervening element cannot withstand it.

Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwell inborn in her. Variant: Nature is constrained by the order of her own law which lives and works within her.

The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes 104 to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

Necessity is a guardian in Nature.

Every action done by nature is done in the shortest way.

Nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.

We may call painting the grandchild of nature.

One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

Why are the bones of great fishes, and oysters and corals and various other shells and sea-snails, found on the high tops of mountains that border the sea, in the same way in which they are found in the depths of the sea?

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside 72 over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?

We might say that the earth has the spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil.

The water which rises in the mountain is the blood which keeps the mountain in life.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.