If the laws of nature do not strike most of us as incompatible with free will, that is because we have not imagined how human behavior would appear if all cause-and-effect relationships were understood.

Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.

Not everyone’s nature is golden and green
And you can’t fight what’s in your nature

No matter how much we desire certainty, predictability, and guaranteed results, the nature of human existence is fundamentally opposed to any attempt to control what will happen next.

Nothing exists without a purpose. And we humans are subject to the laws of nature just as everything else on earth is.

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

From a caprice of nature, not from the ignorance of man. Not a mistake has been made in the working. But we cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

Try as one may, it is impossible to deny one's nature

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.

The eye — it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

Don't live by your own rules, but in harmony with nature