#des

The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass. ↗

— Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

#florida #nature #river-of-grass #nature

Chava," he said, "it's a cruel irony that you have the most difficulty precisely when those around you are on their best behavior. I suspect you would find it much easier if we all cast politeness aside, and took whatever we pleased." She considered. "It would be easier, at first. But then you might hurt each other to gain your wishes, and grow afraid of each other, and still go on wanting. ↗

— Helene Wecker

#human-nature #nature

...it’s my job to lead you to success, and, if you fail, it’s because I failed, not you.’” (Spoken by Bracke, told by Eric) ↗

— Shannon A. Thompson

#failure #father-son #father-son-conversation #father-son-relationship #fiction

Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#religion #men

Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#religion #religion

The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization. ↗

— Robert Anton Wilson

#behavior #bible #civilization #describes #god

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance. ↗

— Henry Miller

#anyone #belief #destiny #enough #great

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. ↗

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

#defiance #despair #done #god #greatest

Discipline imposed from the outside eventually defeats when it is not matched by desire from within. ↗

— Dawson Trotman

#discipline #religion #religion

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#art #criticism #desire #films #gravity