Noun

Singular nature

Plural natures

nature (plural natures)

1. The essential characteristics

   Albert Camus' book Le Mythe de Sisyphe is of a philosophical nature.

2. A wild primitive state of being (e.g. the environment or the outdoors; foods; herbs), especially in its essential form, untainted by human or synthetic chemical influence.
3. The summary of everything that has to do with biological, chemical and physical states and events in the physical universe

Derived terms

• animal nature
• back to nature
• bad nature
• by nature
• call of nature
• defy the laws of nature
• crime against nature
• freak of nature
• good nature
• human nature

• law of nature/laws of nature
• Mother Nature
• nature morte
• nature preserve
• nature reserve
• nature strip
• nature study
• nature worship
• second nature

Look at pages starting with nature.

Related terms

• antenatal
• innate
• nascent
• natal
• nation
• national
• nationality
• native
• nativity
• nativization
• nativism
• natural
• naturism
• naturalism
• perinatal
• prenatal

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

The term "nature" may refer to living plants and animals, geological processes, weather, and physics, such as matter and energy. The term is often refers to the "natural environment" or wilderness—wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general areas that have not been substantially altered by humans, or which persist despite human intervention. For, example, manufactured objects and human interaction are generally not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of "nature" implies a distinction between natural and artificial elements of the Earth, with the artificial as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind.

Quotes regarding nature:

• "Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same." –-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• "Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative." - H.G. Wells (1866-1946), Mind at the End of Its Tether, 1945

• "A flower is an educated weed." - Luther Burbank

• "All nature wears one universal grin." - Henry Fielding (1707-1754), 'Tom Thumb the Great, 1730.

• "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." –-John Muir (1838-1914)

• "Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher." - William Wordsworth (1770-1850), The Tables Turned, 1798

• "Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown." –-Humphry Davy (1778-1829), 30.11.1825

• "How Strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!" - Emily Dickinson, (1830-1886), Letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper.

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Fri Jan 29 11:02:09 2010