There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
— John Steinbeck
Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine.
— John Shirley
It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different.
— John Shelby Spong
I'm an optimist. You can't be an entrepreneur if you're not essentially an optimist, so I'm an optimist by nature.
— John Sculley
It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
— John Ruskin
Fashion is instant - after six months, it disappears, and you have to start again. That's the nature of it.
— John Rocha
Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are men at the top of their game, and Jackson especially is going to change the nature of film-making.
— John Rhys-Davies
She's not forgiven me, but we have a wonderful life from our family and that's the nature and quality of that woman that she can say that.
— John Prescott
For me, if I have done my duty, the continued approbation of Congress and the Marine Committee will make me rich indeed, and far more than reward me for a life of service devoted from principles of philanthropy, to support the dignity of human nature.
— John Paul Jones
The actions that we take on the counterterrorism front, again, are to take actions against individuals where we believe that the intelligence base is so strong and the nature of the threat is so grave and serious, as well as imminent, that we have no recourse except to take this action that may involve a lethal strike.
— John O. Brennan
Whenever a new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counterbalancing human response - that is, high touch - or the technology is rejected... We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human nature.
— John Naisbitt
Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.
— John Muir
Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
My boy, one small breeze doesn't make a wind storm.
— John McGraw
Sports occupies a central place in our society, and, as such, it is unavoidably cultural in nature and often engaged in societal issues.
— John Skipper
The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?
— John Shelton Reed
Mother Nature is not sweet.
As long as our quality and company continue to get better, by nature, we will get bigger.
— John Schnatter
The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
In the Everybody-Give-Me-A-Hug victim culture in which we live, the obese want a spot at the table along with those who face discrimination based on the way that God or Nature or our Intelligent Designer created us.
— John Ridley
Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.
— John Ralston Saul
However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.
— John Polkinghorne
It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.
It strikes me as one of nature's greatest jokes that the types of food we all like to eat more than anything (especially in winter) are the very things that cause the most insane weight gain - mounds of fluffy mashed potato, hot, thickly buttered toast, huge, steaming bowls of pasta, great big... actually, I'll stop there.
— John Niven
I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.
Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature's forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.
The mountains are calling and I must go.
I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
— John Milton
It's only human nature to want to know what you can do on your own or with someone else.
— John McEnroe
I'm cursed with empathy. I'm also by nature way too opinionated.
When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.
I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.
An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.
From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and Christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy.
— John Quincy Adams
Love is of that excellent nature, that it is esteemed by the best of men, and accepted from the meanest persons; what then is the affection of a Father!
— John Pearson
We are always creating new tools and techniques to help people, but the fundamental framework is remarkably resilient, which means it must have something to do with the nature of organizations or human nature.
— John P. Kotter
Actors have become much more savvy about the nature of television celebrity these days. We were not. The kind of celebrity culture that exists now didn't exist in the 1980s.
— John Nettles
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain - a magic wand in Nature's hand - every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?
Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.
