#ali

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! ↗

— Annie Dillard

#nature #prayer #seeing #spirituality #nature

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#materialism #nature

There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms -- if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us -- the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#morality #nature

ভীতি কখনোই প্রীতির মতো স্থায়ী ফলদায়ক ঔষধ নয়, তবে তাতে সাময়িক উপশম অবশ্যই হয়। ↗

— Abu Taher Misbah

#human-nature #nature

Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: "Deh moon looks like hell, don't it? ↗

— Stephen Crane

#humor #naturalism #nature

Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pull back the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics, human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatness of this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewn across the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist—my soul purpose. ↗

— Brian Bowers

#human-nature #humanity #longing #love #philosophy-of-life

We're living in a teetering tower of babble. A shaky reality of words. A DNA soup for disaster. The natural world destroyed, we're left with this cluttered world of language. ↗

— Chuck Palanhiuk

#language #words #nature

Anthropomorphism originally meant the attribution of human characteristics to God. It is curious that the word is now used almost exclusively to ascribe human characteristics--such as fidelity or altruism or pride, or emotions such as love, embarrassment, or sadness--to the nonhuman animal. One isguilty of anthropomorphism, though it is no longer a sacrilegious word. It is a derogatory, dismissive one that connotes a sort of rampant sentimentality. It’s just another word in the arsenal of the many words used to attack the animal rights movement. ↗

— Joy Williams

#animals #anthromorphism #sentimentality #love

Modern materialists and religious extremists alike lack the spiritual animistic reverence for non-human beings that every culture once understood as a given. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#animism #beatdom #environmentalism #materialism-versus-spiritualism #religious-extremism

I am not nor have I ever been a 'wild-eyed' charismatic, but rather an 'empowered evangelical' (Nathan)". ~R. Alan Woods [2006] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#empowered #evangelicalism #john-wimber #r-alan-woods #rich-nathan