Physical Nature Quotes

What you are, and who you are should provide greater clarity about where you have been and where you are headed. Although one distinguishes spiritual from physical nature, the ultimate unification of the two is the consequence of the struggle for internal, external and eternal – peace. ~ T.F. Hodge

The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend.
While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Consider the capacity of the human body for pleasure. Sometimes, it is pleasant to eat, to drink, to see, to touch, to smell, to hear, to make love. The mouth. The eyes. The fingertips, The nose. The ears. The genitals. Our voluptific faculties (if you will forgive me the coinage) are not exclusively concentrated here. The whole body is susceptible to pleasure, but in places there are wells from which it may be drawn up in greater quantity. But not inexhaustibly. How long is it possible to know pleasure? Rich Romans ate to satiety, and then purged their overburdened bellies and ate again. But they could not eat for ever. A rose is sweet, but the nose becomes habituated to its scent. And what of the most intense pleasures, the personality-annihilating ecstasies of sex? I am no longer a young man; even if I chose to discard my celibacy I would surely have lost my stamina, re-erecting in half-hours where once it was minutes. And yet if youth were restored to me fully, and I engaged again in what was once my greatest delight – to be fellated at stool by nymphet with mouth still blood-heavy from the necessary precautions – what then? What if my supply of anodontic premenstruals were never-ending, what then? Surely, in time, I should sicken of it.

"Even if I were a woman, and could string orgasm on orgasm like beads on a necklace, in time I should sicken of it. Do you think Messalina, in that competition of hers with a courtesan, knew pleasure as much on the first occasi ~ Jesus I. Aldapuerta

Then she understood that what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form, the sense of an activity going step by step to some chosen end across a span of time. The work of cooking a meal was like a closed circle, completed and gone, leading nowhere. But the work of building a path was a living sum, so that no day was left to die behind her, but each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired its immortality on every succeeding tomorrow. A circle, she thought, is the movement proper to physical nature, they say that there's nothing but circular motion in the inanimate universe around us, but the straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from a start to an end. The cooking of meals, she thought, is like the feeding of coal to an engine for the sake of a great run, but what would be the imbecile torture of coaling an engine that had no run to make? It is not proper for man's life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles dropping off like zeros behind him--man's life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station to--oh, stop it! ~ Ayn Rand

Breaking through the cyclical laws of physical nature is the basis of the spiritual process that Adiyogi explored. ~ Sadhguru

Some say that you should not want money at all because the desire for money is materialistic and not Spiritual. But we want you to remember that you are here in this very physical world where Spirit has materialized. You cannot separate yourself from the aspect of yourself that is Spiritual, and while you are here in these bodies you cannot separate yourselves from that which is physical or material. All of the magnificent things of a physical nature that are surrounding you are Spiritual in nature. ~ Esther Hicks

The seemingly insuperable difficulties of deep-space travel suggest an intention to keep us fixed at home in our own solar system, and the physical nature of our part of the Universe, as well as the basic rules of physics and chemistry, have a warning look about them, like barriers designed to isolate intelligent life. This means that for us, unlike the situation for humble microorganisms, deep-space travel is probably a stark impossibility. ~ Fred Hoyle

The more a man is successful in getting out (or coming out) from his own individuality, of his egoist self, and to control (or dominate) the instincts of his physical nature, the more his character, by rising above material contingencies, widen, become free and independent. ~ African Spir

But, as I know that strength arising from obedience has a way of simplifying things which seem impossible, my will very gladly resolves to attempt this task although the prospect seems to cause my physical nature great distress; for the Lord has not given me strength enough to enable me to wrestle continually both with sickness and with occupations of many kinds without feeling a great physical strain. May He Who has helped me by doing other and more difficult things for me help also in this: in His mercy I put my trust. ~ Teresa Of Avila

Then there occurred to me the 'glucklichste Gedanke meines Lebens,' the happiest thought of my life, in the following form. The gravitational field has only a relative existence in a way similar to the electric field generated by magnetoelectric induction. Because for an observer falling freely from the roof of a house there exists-at least in his immediate surroundings-no gravitational field [his italics]. Indeed, if the observer drops some bodies then these remain relative to him in a state of rest or of uniform motion, independent of their particular chemical or physical nature (in this consideration the air resistance is, of course, ignored). The observer therefore has the right to interpret his state as 'at rest.' Because of this idea, the uncommonly peculiar experimental law that in the gravitational field all bodies fall with the same acceleration attained at once a deep physical meaning. Namely, if there were to exist just one single object that falls in the gravitational field in a way different from all others, then with its help the observer could realize that he is ina gravitational field and is falling in it. If such an object does not exist, however-as experience has shown with great accuracy-then the observer lacks any objective means of perceiving himself as falling in a gravitational field. Rather he has the right to consider his state as one of rest and his environment as field-free relative to gravitation. The experimentally known matter independence of the ~ Albert Einstein

The superior man is he who develops, in harmonious proportions, his moral, intellectual, and physical nature. ~ Unknown

For centuries after Christ, the church and other religions that use cruciform symbols have misrepresented the physical nature of Christ's death with a satanic symbol (cross), and a pagan idol (corpus). This secret has been concealed by the church for centuries after Christ. ~ Nwaocha Ogechukwu

Porter Rockwell was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

The Christian message does not begin with "accept Christ as your Savior"; it begins with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". The Bible teaches that God is the sole source of the entire created order. No other gods compare with Him; no natural forces exist on their own; nothing receives its nature or existence from another source. Thus, His Word, or laws, or creation ordinances give the world its order and structure. God's creative world is the source of the laws of physical nature (natural sciences), human nature (ethics, politics, economics, aesthetics) and even logic. That's why Psalm 119:91 says, "all things are your servants". There is no philosophically or spiritually neutral subject matter. ~ Nancy Pearcey

'Environment' is not an abstract concern, or simply a matter of aesthetics, or of personal taste - although it can and should involve these as well. Man is shaped to a great extent by his surroundings. Our physical nature, our mental health, our culture and institutions, our opportunities for challenge and fulfillment, our very survival - all of these are directly related to and affected by the environment in which we live. They depend upon the continued healthy functioning of the natural systems of the Earth. ~ Richard M. Nixon

When properly applied, the kamae reflects the ninja's heart.
This means that our physical nature conforms to our intentions,
and there is no division between our interior and exterior
aspects. This state of integrated mind and body action is
totally natural, and can be observed readily in the movements
of animals as they interact with their environment. Only human
beings seem to develop the need to be trained in natural body
motion. ~ Masaaki Hatsumi

If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphs of psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself. ~ Johan Huizinga

Media are really nothing more than extensions of us. It is we, not the media, who are metaphysical. Metaphysics is part and parcel of an organ – the human brain – that processes information both propositionally and presentationally, in words and in images; in reason and in imagination. We believe and refuse to believe. We believe in things that have no physical nature, no material reality, and we refuse to believe in them. We believe in things that not only have a physical, material nature but are also empirically measurable, and we refuse to believe in them. And our media play a role in all of this. ~ Peter K. Fallon

Compassion is born from understanding suffering. We all should learn to embrace our own suffering, to listen to it deeply, and to have a deep look into its nature. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed! ~ Augustine Of Hippo

If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

As they came out from the shelter of the trees and the Great Meadows stretched out before them, Kit caught her breath. She had not expected anything like this. From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As far as she could see they stretched on either side, a great level sea of green, broken here and there by a solitary graceful elm. Was it the fields of sugar cane they brought to mind, or the endless reach of the ocean to meet the sky? Or was it simply the sense of freedom and space and light that spoke to her of home? ~ Elizabeth George Speare

You're not in love with me, either, Layla. You just aren't. You felt a lot of physical shit, and that made you think it was emotional. The trouble is, body needs a hell of a lot less than the soul does to connect. ~ J.R. Ward

But of all the human emotions, curiosity is the one least subject to the general proscription against gluttony, and once engaged, even if engaged initially in the service of religion, it has a tendency to grow relentlessly, until in the end the scholar becomes curious about the nature of revelation itself. ~ David Berlinski

Gulls shriek plovers and sandpipers run up and down the beach. The tide is all the way out. The stone jetty from which people fish in the summer is covered with seals basking in the light. ~ Kathleen Valentine

All wines are by their very nature full of reminiscence, the golden tears and red blood of summers that are gone. ~ Richard Le Gallienne

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they "came to their senses" and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of "enoughness"". ~ Sheila M. Reindl

Ali In Battle

Learn from Ali how to fight
without your ego participating.

God's Lion did nothing
that didn't originate
from his deep center.

Once in battle he got the best of a certain knight
and quickly drew his sword. The man,
helpless on the ground, spat
in Ali's face. Ali dropped his sword,
relaxed, and helped the man to his feet.

"Why have you spared me?
How has lightning contracted back
into its cloud? Speak, my prince,
so that my soul can begin to stir
in me like an embryo."

Ali was quiet and then finally answered,
"I am God's Lion, not the lion of passion.
The sun is my lord. I have no longing except for the One.

When a wind of personal reaction comes,
I do not go along with it.

There are many winds full of anger,
and lust and greed. They move the rubbish
around, but the solid mountain of true nature
stays where it's always been.

There's nothing now
except the divine qualities.
Come through the opening into me.

Your impudence was better than any reverence,
because in this moment I am you and you are me.

I give you this opened heart as God gives gifts:
the poison of your spit has become
the honey of friendship. ~ Rumi

Every person and everything is an extension of your consciousness. This includes humans, animals, elements of nature, inanimate objects and everything down to a subatomic level. You have manifested them and they have manifested you through the collective consciousness. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs

It is human nature to believe that the phenomena we know are the only ones that exist," Marie wrote, "and whenever some chance discovery extends the limits of our knowledge we are filled with amazement." She was talking about radioactivity, but she could almost have been talking about the supernatural: "We cannot become accustomed to the idea that we live in a world that is revealed to us only in a restricted portion of its manifestations. ~ Kathleen Krull

People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If asked to make a drawing, little girls almost always create scenes with at least one person, while males nearly always draw things - cars, rockets, or trucks. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers

Do not make the mistake of imagining that the nature of
mind is exclusive to our mind only. It is in fact the nature of
everything. It can never be said too often that to realize the
nature of mind is to realize the nature of all things. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent. ~ Thomas Huxley

Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Isn't it amazing how we always have to put our mark on things? And how, from the natural world, we find evidence over and over again that reminds us, not so much of the birds, but of our own stories and our own kinds of art? ~ Rosamond Purcell

There is nothing good in love but the physical part. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The ancients, even though they believed in destiny , believed primarily in nature , in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself. It was butting one's head against a wall. ~ Albert Camus

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. ~ Henry David Thoreau

If he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share. ~ Charles Olson

You are not your body, not your appearance. Those are only your packaging. When the physical parts of you wear out, you live on, unencumbered by the weight of flesh and beauty. You are free to soar because you were never those things. You are something more, something eternal. ~ Toni Sorenson

And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good. ~ Cynthia Kadohata

It is not human nature to dominate, but to create. Yes, humankind falters every now and then, but you know how to learn from your past mistakes. You've done it before, and you can do it again. I believe that ultimately, you will create a civilization that preserves and protects even as it grows. Do you understand? The spirits will always have a place in this world, as long as you -- and humans like you -- create a place for us. - Lady Tienhai, Guardian Spirit/Queen ~ Gene Luen Yang

The Golden Number is a mathematical definition of a proportional function which all of nature obeys, whether it be a mollusk shell, the leaves of plants, the proportions of the animal body, the human skeleton, or the ages of growth in man. ~ R. A. Schwaller De Lubicz

I'm a pacifist by nature. ~ Rafael Correa

And then it happens. The panic. It's slow at first, creeping through the cracks in my thoughts until everything starts to feel heavy. It builds; it becomes something physical that clutches at my insides and squeezes out the air and the blood. ~ Sara Barnard

Kim was, as always, utterly happy while running, in accord with nature, in harmony with the universe, in touch with the truth that was in him, full of love for all creatures even to the lowliest insect. ~ Susan Trott

Every relationship in our life is divinely orchestrated, and every situation comes to into our reality for us to anchor greater consciousness. Whether the mind is labeling it as good or bad, every experience you have is allowing you to evolve as a Spiritual being. Each experience is guiding you to become unconditional love and compassion which is your TRUE nature. Everything that you experience today is for your ultimate Highest Good. ~ Premlatha Rajkumar

So she talked, and Noah, to his credit, did not quibble. He interrupted once or twice, but only for the sake of amplification or clarification, never because he doubted the essential veracity of her story. She told him all of it, from the pod, to the aircraft, to Eunice and the Tantors. She told him what she had learned of Eunice's nature, and why she had no reason to doubt that she had been talking to a machine. She told him of Eunice's amnesia, and the thing called Arachne. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Your planet's immune system is trying to get rid of you. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. ... "These Native Americans ... believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature." ... Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us try a similarly succinct summary of the beliefs of many Christians today: "These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died."

Textbooks never describe Christianity this way. It's offensive. Believers would immediately argue that such a depiction fails to convey the symbolic meaning or the spiritual satisfaction of communion. ~ James W. Loewen

I thought we were well past this game by now."
"What game?" I blushed.
"The one where you act like I'm faking my physical attraction to you. You got my dick hard as a fucking rock in public yesterday. I think you should know by now that I genuinely enjoy looking at you and that it's going to be torture for me tonight.
"I struggled to muster up a response. "What…what do you mean?"
"That I'm gonna get to watch you all night tonight – wear you on my arm, look at you, touch you. But I can't go anywhere beyond that and if we're being honest here, it's going to fucking suck. ~ Stella Rhys

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head. ~ C.S. Lewis

I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather. ~ Henry David Thoreau

He read Kolakowski on the danger, implicit in all utopian movements, that if the material of human nature proved too weak or brittle to withstand the stresses that the utopian architecture tried to impose upon it, then the architects might prefer to discard the humans rather than their precious blueprints. He ~ Daniel Oppenheimer

There are two types of cleanliness: organic cleanliness and chemical cleanliness. Often chemical cleanliness is toxic and harmful. Natural or organic cleanliness focus on maintaining harmony with nature. ~ Amit Ray