Contrary To Nature Quotes

#1. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.

Eric Hoffer

#2. Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Augustine Of Hippo

#3. I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how a needle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock the thread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary to nature and it irritates me.

Neal Stephenson

#4. Not even the vicissitudes of fortune are contrary to nature or to the providential ordering of the universe. It all flows from the gods, who determine what is needed for the welfare of the whole universe, of which you are a part.

Marcus Aurelius

#5. People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.

Victor Hugo

#6. Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Baruch Spinoza

#7. What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?

Michel Foucault

#8. God has given this way of life to Israel: to abstain from everything which is contrary to nature, that is to say, anger, fits of passion, jealousy, hatred and slandering the brethren; in short, everything that is characteristic of the old man.

Poemen

#9. Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs.

Galileo Galilei

#10. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle.

#11. Neither by nature, therefore, nor contrary to nature are the virtues present; they are instead present in us who are of such a nature as to receive them, and who are completed1 through habit.

Aristotle.

#12. Let your will to avoid have no concern with what is not in man's power; direct it only to things in man's power that are contrary to nature.

Epictetus

#13. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

Aldous Huxley

#14. Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.

Marcus Aurelius

#15. Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

William Faulkner

#16. Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius

#17. Monogamy is contrary to nature but necessary for the greater social good.

Rita Mae Brown

#18. No truly conscious human being sabotages himself - it's impossible, because it's contrary to Nature.

Guy Finley

#19. Contrary to nature's rule of "survival of the fittest," we humans measure civilization by how we respond to the most vulnerable and the suffering.

Philip Yancey

#20. If the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature, and could not be eternal, since nothing violent is eternal . It follows, therefore, that the
earth is not moved with a circular motion.

Thomas Aquinas

#21. To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

Denis Diderot

#22. That which exists in nature is a something purely individual and particular. Art, on the contrary, is essentially destined to manifest the general.

August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

#23. You can't serve God by acting contrary to His nature

Lynn Austin

#24. And yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature.

Leo Tolstoy

#25. [T]he Papist and the Arminian on the one extremity, enthroneth Nature, and extolleth proud merit, and abaseth Christ and free grace. The Familist, libertine, and Antinomian, on a contrary extremity and opposition, turn man into a block, and make him into a mere patient in the way to heaven.

Samuel Rutherford

#26. [P]erfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he ... introduces confusion and disorder into society ... [thus] where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.

Samuel West

#27. Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

Albert Camus

#28. Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.

Salvador Dali

#29. Nature does not count nor do integers occur in nature. Man made them all, integers and all the rest, Kronecker to the contrary notwithstanding.

Percy Williams Bridgman

#30. It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#31. His will cannot be neutral or 'free' to act contrary to his nature.

Charles Spurgeon

#32. The naturalists of yore esteemed the ocean to be a treasury of wonders, and sought therein for monstrosities and organisms contrary to the law of nature, such as they interpreted it.

Edward Forbes

#33. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes, are to any of us.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham And Vaux

#34. Socialism cannot function, because its economic reward structure is contrary to human nature.

Frans De Waal

#35. No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.

David Hume

#36. What is impossible to God? Not that which is difficult to His power, but that which is contrary to His nature.

Ambrose

#37. I do think that it is legitimate to talk of goals and functions in nature, and that these things can be made sense of in naturalistic terms. There is nothing at all contrary to naturalism in the idea of goal-directed systems.

Hilary Kornblith

#38. Resolved, That all laws which prevent women from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#39. I do not believe that it is possible to teach a cat to obey; that is contrary to his nature.

Patricia Moyes

#40. To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.

John Knox

#41. It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature.

John Boyne

#42. Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason ...

Thomas Aquinas

#43. What worries me is that the debate about gender differences still seems to polarize nature vs. nurture, with some in the social sciences and humanities wanting to assert that biology plays no role at all, apparently unaware of the scientific evidence to the contrary

Simon Baron-Cohen

#44. Our adaptation to the natural forces
is a question of existence or non-existence.
We cannot transform the universe or nature so that they
adapt themselves to us; on the contrary, we must adapt ourselves
to nature and her laws.

Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

#45. [H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

John Locke

#46. And what makes humans so sure that thinking is the most important activity in the universe? ... I on the contrary have never forgotten that first I existed and then, with a lot of difficulty, I learned to think. (p. 31)

Sabina Berman

#47. On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began
that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.

Leo Tolstoy

#48. I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.

William Shenstone

#49. If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.

Berenice Abbott

#50. When I look back on it, I think, "Why didn't you stop the cruelty earlier?" To stand back was contrary to my upbringing and nature. When I stood back as a noninterfering experimental scientist, I was, in a sense, as drawn into the power of the situation as any prisoners and guards.

Philip Zimbardo

#51. Makeup is for women. It's the law of nature for them to doll themselves up to get a man."
"On the contrary. [ ... ] In the natural world, it is the male of the species who is adorned with colors to attract, impress and keep his potential mate.

Dawn Flemington

#52. The daguerreotype is not merely an instrument which serves to draw Nature; on the contrary it is a chemical and physical process which gives her the power to reproduce herself.

Louis Daguerre

#53. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS, - that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#54. I'm quite contrary. If people agree on something, I tend to gravitate the other way by my nature. I don't like to be told what to do. I think it goes back to school. I like to do things I want to do and I really don't like doing what I don't want to do.

Andy Serkis

#55. There are almost unlimited possibilities for making discoveries and to uncover the unknown. It is in the nature of the discovery that it can not be planned or programmed. On the contrary it consists of surprises and appears many times in the most unexpected places.

Bengt I. Samuelsson

#56. Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously does not allow that resistance to put him off his stride; on the contrary, it is that much more of a stimulus to fight for victory.

Vincent Van Gogh

#57. The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#58. My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

Marcus Aurelius

#59. The central ideas of Christianity, an angry God and vicarious atonement, are contrary to every fact in nature, as also to the better aspirations of the human heart; they are, in our present stage of enlightenment, absurd, preposterous, and blasphemous propositions.

Virchand Gandhi

#60. Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.

Honore De Balzac

#61. Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason: truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

#62. I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere;

Charlotte Bronte

#63. What is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play.

John Stuart Mill

#64. Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

Elie Wiesel

#65. The conservative thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

Russell Kirk

#66. Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.

Jeremy Collier

#67. There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself

James Nayler

#68. Pain is a sensation produced by something contrary to the course of nature and this sensation is set up by one of two circumstances: either a very sudden change of the temperament (or the bad effect of a contrary temperament) or a solution of continuity.

Avicenna

#69. Evil is an adjective. It is an adjective used to describe those actions of man (and their effects) that are contrary to the nature of God.

N.D. Wilson

#70. Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God's laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature.

Charles Babbage

#71. Things can never be as they were. It's astonishing how we comment on change, as if change is something remarkable. On the contrary, not to change is unnatural, against nature.

Shashi Deshpande

#72. It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.

Edmund Burke

#73. No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.

Joseph Campbell

#74. We came here to co-create with God by extending love. Life spent with any other purpose in mind is meaningless, contrary to our nature, and ultimately painful.

Marianne Williamson

#75. This Lord of natures today was transformed contrary to His nature;
it is not too difficult for us to also overthrow our evil will. Hymns of the Nativity, Hymn 1:97, pg. 74 in Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York: Paulist Press, 1989).

Ephrem The Syrian

#76. There - fore what is contrary to human nature is contrary to God's will.

Peter Kreeft

#77. On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.

George Eliot

#78. There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

Jonathan Swift

#79. Ah! How contrary are the teachings of Jesus to the feelings of nature! Without the help of His grace it would be impossible not only to put them into practice, but to even understand them.

Therese De Lisieux

#80. Nothing is impossible to us, except of course, that which is contrary to the laws of nature and the Universe.

Emile Coue

#81. Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature.

Plutarch

#82. When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough.

Criss Jami

#83. Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

Ayn Rand

#84. Yet, there is a sense of some deep sort that runs entirely contrary to human nature; that in putting ourselves first, we must by necessity put others first.

Craig D. Lounsbrough