Quotes about Nature

To return home, to see into one's own nature, is the end aimed at by the practitioner, But how is one to see into one's own nature? It is necessary to bring light to one's existence, to live life, to render present and permanent the awareness of being. Put in another way, it is necessary that one sees the cyprus in the courtyard. If one does not see the presence of the cyprus in his own garden, how can one see into his own nature?

We do not expect a person always to be a flower, we have to understand his or her gardens as well.

The nature of rumor is known to all.

The power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted, force, known or knowable.

We must be clear that whatever we say of God in such human concepts can never be more than an indication of Him; no such concept can really conceive the nature of God. God is inconceivable.

Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray!

By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

The jubilation of God's salvation corresponds to man's very real condition of lostness ... In Scripture, there is never any mention of a relativizing of sin since any such relativizing of sin would also automatically relativize the unspeakably wonderful nature of salvation.

Evil in man is radical, so much so that it cannot be overcome by human power.

Man does not have the power to begin by himself any change in spiritual things ... There is no limit or boundary within human nature beyond which we can find some last human reserve untouched by sin.

The "Nature Psalms" ... This understanding, and seeing, and hearing, is possible only ... in the enlightening of the eyes by the salvation of God ... But this seeing and hearing is not a projection of the believing subject, but an actual finding and seeing, and hearing! Here nothing is 'read into', but is only an understanding of the reality of revelation.

Common grace ... an imperfect solution ... does centre our attention on the gracious act of God in protecting man's corrupt and apostate nature from total demonization.