Quotes about Nature

They testify that nature is not changed but is preserved by God. But the stupid and crazy mob of monks has taught that parents, wives, and the world should be abandoned and that one should withdraw into a monastery. But what is to become of human society or finally of all life? Surely that was not sanctity or worship of God, as they have called it; it was satanic madness.

For when the heart is evil, all its works are evil, no matter how splendid they are. [And here it is clear that God is speaking, because He judges their hearts.] 1 And this word aptly and clearly expresses the nature of hypocrisy, which is a righteous performance in the eyes of men on earth, but is evil in the heart. Such are all heretics, all pretenders who create an appearance in public to which their heart does not correspond.

The human seed, this mass from which I was formed, is totally corrupt with faults and sins. The material itself is faulty. The clay, so to speak, out of which this vessel began to be formed is damnable. What more do you want? This is how I am; this is how all men are. Our very conception, the very growth of the foetus in the womb, is sin, even before we are born and begin to be human beings.

So we are not sinners because we commit this or that sin, but we commit them because we are sinners first.

it is completely contrary to the nature of sin to confess that one has sinned.

I know a beautiful garden, where there are a great many children in fine little coats, and they go under the trees and gather beautiful apples and pears, cherries and plums; they sing and run about and are as happy as they can be. Sometimes they ride on nice little ponies, with golden bridles and silver saddles. I asked the man whose garden it is, "What little children are these?" And he told me, "They are little children who love to pray and learn and are good.

But grace has changed my nature for the better, to keep me from joining them and shedding innocent blood.

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air.

The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness — yea, the divine nature — appear in man and the universe never to disappear. -Mary Baker Eddy (SH 509:24)

He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about