When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it.

He insisted on being a philosopher, too; under his portrait of the emperor he wrote: “In Nature there is nothing high which is not soon brought low. . . . When the sun has reached its noon, it begins to sink; when the moon is full it begins to wane. To rise to glory is as hard as to build a mountain out of grains of dust; to fall into calamity is as easy as the rebound of a tense spring.” His contemporaries ranked him as the outstanding man of his time in three lines: in painting, in wit, and in foolishness.

A man must either fall or rise in adversity.

There are those people who try to elevate their souls like someone who continually jumps from a standing position in the hope that forcing oneself to jump all day — and higher every day — they would no longer fall back down, but rise to heaven. Thus occupied, they no longer look to heaven. We cannot even take one step toward heaven. The vertical direction is forbidden to us. But if we look to heaven long-term, God descends and lifts us up. God lifts us up easily. As Aeschylus says, ‘That which is divine is without effort.’ There is an ease in salvation more difficult for us than all efforts. In one of Grimm’s accounts, there is a competition of strength between a giant and a little tailor. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before falling back down. The little tailor throws a bird that never comes back down. That which does not have wings always comes back down in the end.

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.

When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall.

Who else is the enemy of Nature but he who mistakes himself for more intelligent than Nature, though it is the highest school for all of us?

La decadencia llega cuando el hombre deja de fijarse en la naturaleza

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

To set oneself above intellect is immediately to fall outside it.

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

C'est en risquant sa vie que l'homme s'élève au-dessus de l'animal.

Like water, many decent individuals will seek lower ground if left to their own inclinations. In most cases you are the one who inspires and demands they go upward rather than settle for the comfort of doing what comes easily.

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.