The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
— Soren Kierkegaard
I am rather partial to Shakespeare, though I haven't done loads. But when it's done right, there's nothing like it. There are layers upon layers upon layers, and you unpack new things constantly. I don't know how he knew so many things - about the world, about women, about human nature, life, death, our fears and hopes.
— Sophie Okonedo
I am aloof by nature. I mind my own business. I'm good with everyone, and I get along fine with people. But work is work, and friendship is friendship. I never mix the two.
— Sonakshi Sinha
If they're not temperamental, I don't want them. It's in the nature of a great artist to be that way.
— Sol Hurok
For a long time, men weren't respecting women. They weren't understanding Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the Motherland, all the motherly stuff. And now we are.
— Skepta
Nature is my church. The wind in the trees and the bugs and the frogs. All those things are comfort to me.
— Sissy Spacek
Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent. Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed cannot be regarded as evil.
— Simon Winchester
Some people are born good-looking. Some have the gift of gab. And some are lucky enough to be born smarter than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, Mother Nature does not dole these characteristics out evenly.
— Simon Sinek
In the Einstein way, I can't believe in a universe that doesn't have some sort of prime mover, identical with all of created nature. I have a whole lot of a harder time with supposing the fine print of the Torah was a direct revelation.
— Simon Schama
I think the best science fiction, especially literature, is political in nature and is often an allegory about something problematic in our world, and it's something that makes the 'X-Men' comics so relevant - they're about xenophobia and prejudice.
— Simon Kinberg
By competent evidence, is meant such as the nature of the thing to be proved requires; and by satisfactory evidence, is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind, beyond any reasonable doubt.
— Simon Greenleaf
Well, capitalism is going to grow and grow. The nature of it is that the guy who has the most poker chips on the table has more leverage than everyone else. He can eventually outbluff everyone else and outraise everyone else at the table. That's what has happened and it needs to be corrected.
— Simon Baker
When you're surrounded by majestic Norwegian nature, it's very easy to start thinking about stuff you don't have time to in everyday life.
— Sigrid
The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.
— Sigmund Freud
I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.
— Sidney Poitier
For me, growing up, I felt like there was something fatally and tragically flawed in my nature and that it was my duty to try to avoid falling for that vice.
— Shyam Selvadurai
I am not very strategic by nature.
— Shriya Pilgaonkar
All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.
— Sophocles
I've always wanted to fight for people who didn't have arms. I've always wanted to speak up for people who don't have a voice. I've always wanted to protect people who couldn't protect themselves. It's my nature. It's my instinct.
— Sophia Bush
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed?
— Solomon Short
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
— Socrates
The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love.
— Sitting Bull
The idea that skiing might not be fun, might not be for everyone, had never occurred to me. Where I come from, the sport signified pleasure, nature, family happiness.
— Siri Hustvedt
The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light.
The history of the Jews has been written overwhelmingly by scholars of texts - understandably given the formative nature of the Bible and the Talmud. Seeing Jewish history through artifacts, architecture and images is still a young but spectacularly flourishing discipline that's changing the whole story.
The necessity for rules and strictness is a way of dealing with an enormously powerful impulse: Germans are among the most emotional people on the planet. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as a nation, they are always drawn back to nature and the forest.
— Simon Rattle
I thought it was going to be a hut in Topanga and Janis Joplin was going to come out, but it's a real doctor... I went to Beverly Hills to meet this midwife; you'd think they'd be in nature.
— Simon Helberg
I have a huge admiration for the ability of people to go, 'I don't care if it can't happen. I don't care if you say it's impossible. I am gonna do it anyway.' I think it's an amazing part of human nature. It feeds into faith and belief in human beings to not only do the improbable but almost the impossible.
— Simon Beaufoy
I don't write about nature, but I'm definitely very inspired by it.
The thing I love about Norwegian cities is that you often have nature right at your doorstep - you don't need to go that far. That makes it a lot easier to just get out.
Human nature is such that monogamy is a really hard thing to achieve.
— Sienna Miller
Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values.
— Sidney Hook
I am nomadic by nature.
— Shruti Haasan
Gossip is nature's telephone.
— Sholom Aleichem
No speech can stain what is noble by nature.
It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That's what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.
— Sonia Sotomayor
And when I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature; and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.
— Solomon Ibn Gabirol
I think one of the most important things is just being outside and in touch with nature. You need it!
— Slowthai
Nature is really big and loud the farther south you get.
Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
— Sinclair Lewis
If you look back to the earliest religions, before they got organized and started building churches and amassing wealth, they all sprang from the same place - they were inspired by nature.
— Simon Toyne
I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.
The creative destruction that social media is currently unleashing will change more than technology or the leader board of the Fortune 100. It is driving a qualitative shift in the nature of relationships between brands and their customers.
— Simon Mainwaring
In the ordinary affairs of life we do not require nor expect demonstrative evidence, because it is inconsistent with the nature of matters of fact, and to insist on its production would be unreasonable and absurd.
It is possible that by studying autism we'll learn about the nature of talent. Supposedly there's no connection between scientific talent and autism, but if we look closely, we find a very basic connection.
— Simon Baron-Cohen
My favourite thing about being in nature is that I feel so small and kind of insignificant.
There are two places where I can completely relax: in nature and by the piano.
I admire people who are, by nature, kind and fair to others.
— Sidney Sheldon
Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and forward-looking government.
— Sidney Altman
I think anxiety is the nature of most environments today, and people feel inadequate when they are not able to cope with it.
