#hum

Earthly nature may be parsimonious, but the human mind is prodigal, itself an anomaly that in its wealth of error as well as of insight is exceptional, utterly unique as far as we know, properly an object of wonder. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#wonder #nature

Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly....Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample. ↗

— Marissa Piesman

#humor #life #women #nature

Kur es galu galā biju iekļuvis? Es jutos kā mājās, kā savējo vidū. Te jau viss norisinājās uz mata tāpat kā pie mums, latviešiem! Ķildas, izstāšanās, izslēgšanas, sūdzības, draudi… Raug, ne jau mēs, latvieši, vien esam tie ķildīgie un kašķīgie! Visas pasaules tautas šinī ziņā bija vienādas!… Vienīgā starpība bija tā, ka šeit, saskaitušies, ļaudis viens otru nesaukāja par komūnistiem. Bet rietumnieki jau komūnismu un komūnistus nepazina tik labi kā mēs. ↗

— Anšlavs Eglītis

#international #nature

Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasrue a humanity would never have come into existence--whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the external miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning of creation which cannot be thought away, the solution of the cosmic riddle, the mighty ruler over nature and the despiser of it, the creature which calls its history world history!--Vanitas vanitatum homo. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#vanity #nature

Go! Go! Go! Go!' said that officer, with an expression as though he considered our Cap an individual of the animal kingdom whom neither Buffon nor any other natural philosopher had ever classified, and who, as a creature of unknown habits, might sometimes be dangerous. ↗

— E.D.E.N. Southworth

#humour #nature

Humor relieves the tension between what we see or desire but repress in order to sustain a survivable illusion about the world we live in. As such it's always potent stuff, and dangerous. ↗

— Lynda Williams

#humor #nature

By “the Permanent Things” [T. S. Eliot] meant those elements in the human condition that give us our nature, without which we are as the beasts that perish. They work upon us all in the sense that both they and we are bound up in that continuity of belief and institution called the great mysterious incorporation of the human race. ↗

— Russell Kirk

#human-nature #permanent-things #nature

Nature is infinitely rich and diverse in her ways. She can be seen to break her most unchanging laws. She has made self-interest the motive of all human action, but in the great host of men she produces ones who are strangely constituted, in whom selfishness is scarcely perceptible because they do not place their affections in themselves. Some are passionate about the sciences, others about the public good. They are as attached to the discoveries of others as if they themselves had made them, or to the institutions of public welfare and the state as if they derived benefit from them. This habit of not thinking of themselves influences the whole course of their lives. They don't know how to use other men for their profit. Fortune offers them opportunities which they do not think of taking up. In nearly all men the self is almost never inactive. You will detect their self-interest in nearly all the advice they give you, in the services they do for you, in the contacts they make, in the friendships they form. They are deeply attached to the things which affect their interests however remotely, and are indifferent to all others. When they encounter a man who is indifferent to personal interest they cannot understand him. They suspect him of hidden motives, of affectation, or of insanity. They cast him from their bosom, revile him. ↗

— Jan Potocki

#self-interest #selfishness #selflessness #friendship

...suddenly I got shivers down my spine thinking about how many different people one and the same person can be. ↗

— Janne Teller

#nature

We generally describe the most repulsive examples of man's cruelty as brutal or bestial, implying that such behavior is characteristic of less highly developed animals than ourselves. In fact, however, the extremes of brutal behavior are confined to us: there exists no parallel in nature to our savage treatment of each other. The unmistakable truth is that man is the most vicious and cruel species that ever walked the earth. ↗

— Hans Askenasy

#humanity #nature