Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires. – Marquis de Sade

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

A wise man can do no better than to turn from the churches and look up through the airy majesty of the wayside trees with exultation, with resignation, at the unconquerable unimplicated sun. – Llewelyn Powys, The Pathetic Fallacy