#ai

. Cold Mountain . . . soared in his mind as a place where all his scattered forces might gather. Inman did not consider himself to be a superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world invisible to us. He no longer thought of that world as heaven, nor did he still think that we get to go there when we die. Those teachings had been burned away. But he could not abide by a universe composed only of what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul. ↗

— Charles Frazier-Cold Mountain

#mountain #nature #war #love

Her life had been too safe to need courage, and too easy to develop resolve. ↗

— Stephen T. Harper

#fantastic-prose #just-plain-wow-writing #courage

Fear gripped me as my children and I arrived at the Ukraine-Moldova border crossing. ↗

— Kim De Blecourt

#international-adoption #kim-de-blecourt #orphans #ukraine #until-we-all-come-home

Do mesmo modo que o papel-moeda circula no lugar da prata, também no mundo, no lugar da estima verdadeira e da amizade autêntica, circulam as suas demonstrações exteriores e os seus gestos imitados do modo mais natural possível. Por outro lado, poder-se-ia perguntar se há pessoas que de facto merecem essa estima e essa amizade. Em todo o caso, dou mais valor aos abanos de cauda de um cão leal do que a cem daquelas demonstações e gestos. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#animais #cão #pessoas #nature

Fairy tales are rife with transformation — from beast to handsome prince, from dirty scullery maid to well-dressed princess. It is perhaps no coincidence that nature in the Cinderella stories facilitates transformation, for nature itself is a changeable thing, from season to season, from a sunny day to rain, from an egg to a flying bird in a matter of weeks. (Source: "The Nature of Cinderella".) ↗

— Marie Rutkoski

#fairy-tales #stories #telling-tales #writing #nature

It seemed far more reasonable to belong to a species that had evolved natural tooth replacement than to belong to one that had developed the dental profession. ↗

— Elisabeth Tova Bailey

#dentistry #snails #tooth #nature

I know that men are so eager to be one among the stars. I feel that damaged earth will never let men go off hand. ↗

— Toba Beta

#men #nature #sinned #men

Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation. You can get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about. ↗

— Thor Heyerdahl

#sailing #nature

This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#allegory #criticism #art

What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#friends #friendship #life #proust-questionnaire #rushdie