Echoes

Human subtlety...will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

Nature does not do anything in vain.

It is far from easy to determine whether Nature has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

In default of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of the existence of a God.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design.

It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.

It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.

All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.

The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.

All is not frustrated, though thou find thyself very often afflicted or grievously tempted. Thou art man, not God; thou art flesh, not an angel.