But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.
Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis.
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether something that happens in it is good or bad. Because you never know what will be the consequences of the misfortune. Or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.
Nature is millions of things. And there are millions of ways of understanding its preoccupations.
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
Nature does not always conform to our predispositions and preferences, to what we deem comfortable and easy to understand.
Do you know that moment when you paint a landscape as a child and, when you're maybe under seven or something, the sky is just a blue stripe across the top of the paper? And then there's that somewhat disappointing moment when the teacher tells you that the sky actually comes down in amongst all the branches. And it's like life changes at that moment and becomes much more complicated and a little bit more boring, as it's rather tedious to fill in the branches.
The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. The simplicity of nature is not that which may be easily read but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.
Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age
In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.
Nature's action is complex: and nothing is gained in the long run by pretending that it is simple, and trying to describe it in a series of elementary propositions.
To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn't seem to give a very full picture of the world.
This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.
