#ate

Abstaining from speech marks him who is obeying the spontaneity of his nature. A violent wind does not last for a whole morning; a sudden rain does not last for the whole day. To whom is it that these (two) things are owing? To Heaven and Earth. If Heaven and Earth cannot make such (spasmodic) actings last long, how much less can a man! ↗

— Lao Tzu

#profound #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

Soul: As a cool guy, I'm used to seeing naked women. Blair: That explains the nosebleed ↗

— Atsushi Ohkubo

#manga #soul-eater #manga

The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable. ↗

— Rabindranath Tagore

#water

A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls. ↗

— Julie Murphy

#children-s-books #courtship #frigate-bird #mating #nature

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

It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone’s malignity. When prices rise, it is due to the profiteer; when wages fall, it is due to the capitalist. Why the capitalist is ineffective when wages rise, and the profiteer when prices fall, the man in the street does not inquire. Nor does he notice that wages and prices rise and fall together. If he is a capitalist, he wants wages to fall and prices to rise; if he is a wage earner, he wants the opposite. When a currency expert tries to explain that profiteers and trade unions and ordinary employers have very little to do with the matter, he irritates everybody, like the man who threw doubt on German atrocities. (In World War I) We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. It is so depressing to think taht we suffer because we are fools; yet taking mankind in mass, that is the truth. For this reason, no political party can acquire any driving force except through hatred; it must hold someone to obloquy. If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#hate #scapegoat #treaty-of-versailles #versailles #world-war-i

At dawn the waves looked like mountain ranges tipped with gold as sunbeams slanted low under burgundy clouds. ↗

— David Mitchell

#nature #sun #water #waves #nature

The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space - have already creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world. ↗

— Robert Macfarlane

#nature-writing #walking-on-water #nature

I hate the nature of humans, how much you get closer that much they run away. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#humans #nature #nature