The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.
Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice.
That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.
Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
A proper respect for nature means that you can't pollute the air, poison the rivers and chop down the forests indiscriminately without suffering greatly.
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.