by nature

by nature

Naturally; inherently. Refers to one's traits. I don't think she is a vicious person by nature—growing up in an abusive household just took a toll on her.
See also: by, nature
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • circle
  • junkyard dog
  • give (someone) the length of (one's) tongue
  • have all the hallmarks of (someone or something)
  • have all the hallmarks of somebody/something
  • self-praise is no praise (at all)
  • trash talk
  • gomer
  • goomer
  • WYSIWYG
References in periodicals archive
And these bodies are not supposed to force each other from their natural positions or to move to meet in unnatural positions, because we have already established that forcing bodies are forcing each other to move until they end up with a body moving by nature. And if there were a body that was moving by force to an unnatural position, such as the elements of the worlds, it is necessary that another body would move in that direction by nature.
By nature, however, it is not permitted that the movement should be from one end to the opposite end or in relation to it.
Ibn Sina--Al-Biruni correspondence
Granted nature stops to pay homage to John Henry upon his birth, and John Henry shows a commanding ability over nature at every turn, yet nature is both servant and friend, as is effectively demonstrated by the animals that come to visit him at his birth, in the sun and moon that continually peer over the mountain at him, and in the rainbow that wraps around his shoulders "like love." John Henry is, however, befriended by nature not because he dominates it, but because he understands it.
John Henry: then and now
By the new cosmological thinking, bioengineering is not something artificially superimposed on nature but something spawned by nature's own ongoing evolutionary process.
Reinventing nature
The sum that we invest was itself loaned to us by nature; we do wrong if we spend it on ourselves, or even invest it in ourselves at high rates of interest, for if we do, it will perish with us:
The merchant of Avon: the best guide to 21st-century economics is a 16th-century poet
An investigative team organized by NATURE reports in the July 28 issue that the results of a controversial dilution experiment published in the journal four weeks ago are "not reproducible in the ordinary meaning of that word." A repeat performance got four positive and three negative results at the University of Paris-Sud laboratory of Jacques Benveniste, who led the original 13 researchers.
Nature douses dilution experiment
Nor can we be compelled to admire anything because it is "ordained by nature" Philosophers often express this in technical terms when they say that "ethics is logically in dependent of nature or metaphysics"
The nature of Promethean ethics
"Their actions are spontaneously right, in keeping with the flow of things." Like Swift's Houyhnhnms, by nature people are reasonable, benevolent, perfectly sincere, morally restrained, and non-coercive.
The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism
Suppose someone intent to vindicate the existence of religious knowledge maintains that human beings have by nature a theistic sense.
The Moral Sense
The process of deliberately and actively compensating for our own influence on a particular landscape or ecosystem (by reintroducing extirpated native species, for example, or removing troublesome exotic ones) is by nature an act of reciprocity.
Rituals of restoration
Humans have a wide range of legitimate needs, all of them bred into us by nature itself.
Restoration of preservation: reflections on a clash of environmental philosophies