Wallace Stevens on nature

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Every day, man is making bigger and better fool-proof things, and every day, nature is making bigger and better fools. So far, I think nature is winning.

Albert Einstein1879–1955

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, Book I, 1253a.8

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

Baltasar Gracián1601–1658

• Art