Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature… is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life. – Henri Frederic Amiel

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. – Leonardo da Vinci