#lit

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatest greatness is. ↗

— Phillip Brooks

#nature

If you're smart or rich or lucky Maybe you'll beat the laws of man But the inner laws of spirit And the outer laws of nature No man can ↗

— Joni Mitchell

#nature #objective-morality #nature

The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) ↗

— Victor Davis Hanson

#economics #income-disparity #inequality #military-history #progressivism

Sound the tocsin of national peril and hordes of well-meaning folk with nothing much to do always materialize from nowhere. They itch to meddle in great matters of which their comprehension is usually pretty dim, and have no objection to getting their names and pictures in the papers. ↗

— Leslie McFarlane

#politics #nature

Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits. ↗

— Ernst Cassirer

#knowledge #problem-of-truth #reality #reflection #trust

We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth, which is claimed as the natural order, but which is in fact not natural at all but rather artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. ↗

— Kate Elliott

#politics #nature

Just as certain seeds require a forest fire to crack open their shells, crisis burns away our limited self-concepts, allowing our deeper nature to come forth. We must remember that our suffering carries the seed of our salvation; our problems are actually our answered prayers, and our darkness really is the light in potential. ↗

— Derek Rydall

#emergence #law-of-emergence #selfhelp #spirituality #nature

The most pernicious message relayed by pornography is that women are natural sexual prey to men and love it; that sexuality and violence are congruent; and that for women sex is essentially masochistic, humiliation pleasurable, physical abuse erotic. But along with this message comes another, not always recognized: that enforced submission and the use of cruelty, if played out in heterosexual pairing, is sexually "normal," while sensuality between women, including erotic mutuality and respect, is "queer," "sick," and either pornographic in itself or not very exciting compared with the sexuality of whips and bondage. Pornography does not simply create a climate in which sex and violence are interchangeable; it widens the range of behavior considered acceptable from men in heterosexual intercourse-behavior which reiteratively strips women of their autonomy, dignity, and sexual potential, including the potential of loving and being loved by women in mutuality and integrity. ↗

— Adrienne Rich

#heterosexuality #pornography #women #love

...the controlling of the sex nature builds up a reservoir of strength, and it is this strength that opens the door to the Innermost. ↗

— (None Given) M

#sexuality #tantra #nature

You have a mighty purpose, a function to fulfill — a reason for being. And it’s more than just “make a living.” You are here to make a unique and valuable contribution, to assist (if even in a small way) the evolution of humanity. Look at nature. Everything serves a purpose. Everything is connected to a larger system that allows the whole to operate in harmony. ↗

— Derek Rydall

#emergence #law-of-emergence #selfhelp #spirituality #nature