#at

When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. ↗

— Masanobu Fukuoka

#farming #zen #nature

If the truth is that after there comes a negatively spiritual life, an eternity of mystical experience, what more misleading way of communicating it could possibly be found than the appearance of a human form which eats boiled fish? Again, on such a view, the body would really be a hallucination. And any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is invention, it is the oldest invention that ever entered the mind of man) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#communication

I make a joke of it, but... but I'm afraid of death." He straightened up and turned to look into Joseph's eyes. Joseph saw the fear there and was shocked by the intensity of it. "Are you afraid to die, Joseph?" Joseph considered for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not afraid to now, but then I'm not dying now. When I come to that moment, I will probably be... what's the right word? Maybe frightened in a way that you're frightened when an experience lies before you you've never had. "No more than that?" "I hope not. ↗

— Gilbert Morris

#death #death-and-dying #dying #fear #death

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#nature

Mama says it’s just her nature. Some people are flowers, and some are thorns. ↗

— Jennifer Archer

#nature

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#death

The mountain has left me feeling renewed, more content and positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again. For this time at least, I’ve let myself be rooted in the unshakable sanity of the senses, spared my mind the burden of too much thinking, turned myself outward to experience the world and inward to savor the pleasures it has given me. ↗

— Richard Nelson

#mountains #nature #experience

In God's economy, nothing is slag, nothing is wasted. Every relationship we build is a teacher, every experience we have is a coach. In every scar there is a lesson. In every memory there lives potential to make more. ↗

— Toni Sorenson

#inspirational #learning #life #experience

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#nature #sunshine #nature

The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric. ↗

— Meena Alexander

#writing #experience