Word definition: nature

Etimology

From Middle English nature, natur, from Old French nature, from Latin nātūra (“birth, origin, natural constitution or quality”), future participle from perfect passive participle (g)natus (“born”), from deponent verb (g)nasci (“to be born, originate”) + future participle suffix -urus. Displaced native Old English ġecynd. More at kind.

noun

Examples

I oft admireHow Nature, wise and frugal, could commitSuch disproportions.

In the works of nature we find, in many instances, beauty and sublimity involved among circumstances, which are either indifferent, or which obstruct the general effect: and it is only by a train of experiments, that we can separate those circumstances from the rest... Accordingly, the inexperienced artist, when he copies nature, will copy her servilely... and the beauties of his performances will be encumbered with a number of superfluous or disagreeable concomitants. Experience and observation alone can enable him to make this determination: to exhibit the principles of beauty pure and unadulterated, and to form a creation of his own, more faultless, than ever fell under the observation of his senses.

Most persons in striving after effect lose the likeness when they should go together to produce a good effect you must copy Nature: leave Nature for an imaginary effect & you lose all. Nature as Nature cannot be exceeded, and as your object it [is] to copy Nature twere the hight of folly to look at any thing else to produce that copy.

Nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena, that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source... But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation, addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record! In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate.

Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects.

Nature’s logic was too horrid for him to care for.

...they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall... Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.

Man was entirely at the mercy of nature—a mere scavenger who eked out a miserable existence as a food-gatherer and an eater of shell-fish.

Freamon: She too young for you, boy... They get younger, William. Skinnier too. You don't... 's just the nature of things. Age is age, fat is fat, nature’s nature.Moreland: Pitiful.Freamon: Pitiless. Nature don't care. Nature just is.

As in much of biology, the most satisfying truths in ecology derive from manipulative experimentation. Tinker with nature and quantify how it responds.

Gómez Ortega... explicitly ordered them to study only fresh plants, in situ, to draw every part, and 'to copy nature exactly without presuming to correct it or decorate it as some draughtsmen are used to doing, adding colours and ornaments drawn from their imagination'.

As Hurricane Irma prepares to strike, it's worth remembering that Mother Nature never intended us to live here.

The tao of Lao Tzu was a cosmic tao, inner and unwritten, a tao of Nature, while the tao of Confucius was moral and written.

Nature doesn't lie.

The laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics.

Tectonic activity is part of nature, so there's no way to stop earthquakes.

Vliss.: ... One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,That all with one consent praise new-borne gaudes,Though they are made and moulded of things past,And goe to dust, that is a little guilt,More laud then guilt ore-dusted.

Lady. ...Glamys thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt beWhat thou art promis'd: yet doe I feare thy Nature,It is too full o'th' Milke of humane kindnesse,To catch the neerest way.

Nature passes norture.

Men may change their Climate, but they cannot their Nature.

Domestic animals of a base nature and not fit for food, are not the subjects of theft. This rule includes dogs and cats.

His own better nature which... was magnanimous and heroic, moved and won him.

The Monophysites held that the two Natures were so united, that although the 'One Christ' was partly Human and partly Divine, His two Natures became by their union only one Nature.

Mark hardly knew whether to believe this or not. He already began to suspect that Roswell was something of a humbug, and though it was not in his nature to form a causeless dislike, he certainly did not feel disposed to like Roswell.

The phrase ‘nature and nurture’ is a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed.

Being by nature of a cheerful disposition, the symptom did not surprise his servant, late private of the same famous regiment, who was laying breakfast in an adjoining room.

The contrast between nature and grace, between human appetites and interests and religion, is not absolute, but relative.

Couples bitching at each other is human nature.

Freamon: She too young for you, boy... They get younger, William. Skinnier too. You don't... 's just the nature of things. Age is age, fat is fat, nature's nature.Moreland: Pitiful.Freamon: Pitiless. Nature don't care. Nature just is.

Unlike the static conception of nature or nurture, epigenic research demonstrates how genes and environments continuously interact to produce characteristics throughout a lifetime.

It's not in my nature to steal.

You can't help feeling that way. It's human nature.

Power corrupts. That's just the nature of the beast.

For the French, it was impossible for them to serve her in that nature.

A dispute of this nature caused mischief.

Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.

And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature.

The extent and nature of Bach's influence on Haydn is now due for further reassessment.

What was the nature of your relationship with the deceased?

The best medium might be petroleum, liquified gas, or something of that nature.

...One Hundred of each Nature of Case-Shot...

B.L. cartridges have lubricators choked inside the cartridges of 40-pr. and lower natures.

Any such corrasiue, sharpe or eager medicine... as the said H. shal think his nature is vnable to suffer...

For nature creſſant does not grovve alone / In thevvs and bulkes, but as this temple vvaxes, / The invvard ſervice of the minde and ſoule / Grovves vvide vvithal, […]For a human being's vital functions, increasing, do not grow alone / In physical development and bulk, but as this "temple" [i.e., the body] waxes, / The inward operation of the mind and soul / Grows wide with them.

For a human being's vital functions, increasing, do not grow alone / In physical development and bulk, but as this "temple" [i.e., the body] waxes, / The inward operation of the mind and soul / Grows wide with them.

I returned hungry... and had only snow to supply the calls of nature.

The timber... is found to be brittle and effete; or, to use the workman's expression, 'its nature is gone'.

Nature is unable to repair the extensive injury.

The prison allowance will not support nature.

My iron’s just comin’ to natur’.

Hungry-groond, ground credited to be so much enchanted that a person passing over it would faint if they did not use something to support nature.

He withdrew from the Company to ease Nature.

The women tell you to stop because they's feeling the call of nature. If you don't stop they pee in your lorry.

I hear the call of nature.

She marvelled "What he saw in such a baby"As that prim, silent, cold Aurora Raby?"...Why Adeline had this slight prejudice...For me appears a question far too nice,Since Adeline was liberal by Nature;But Nature’s Nature, and has more capricesThan I have time, or will to take to pieces...

He had placed a spell on her by means of a cunjer bag... Its effect was to rob her of connubial allure—in her words, ‘it stole her nature’.

Every time I felt nature for her, she would rub something on her hands and face to take away my nature.

Freamon: She too young for you, boy... They get younger, William. Skinnier too. You don't... 's just the nature of things. Age is age, fat is fat, nature’s nature.Moreland: Pitiful.Freamon: Pitiless. Nature don't care. Nature just is.

Lady. ... Come you Spirits,That tend on mortall thoughts, vnsex me here,...make thick my blood,Stop vp th'accesse, and passage to Remorse,That no compunctious visitings of NatureShake my fell purpose...

Have we not seen The murd'ring son ascend his parent's bed,Thro' violated Nature force his way,And stain the sacred womb where once he lay?

She had no nature, nor indeed any passion but that of money.

...I could bear much. I'd not move nor screamWhile you wrote the red stripes:But there's no nature in you...

If a man want to break his wife from some man, he steals this dishcloth... an' he ketches her nachure in this dishcloth...

... offer her the Horse, and... wash her Nature with cold Water ...

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