#mer

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this--dog days--that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. ↗

— Tove Jansson

#nature #summer #nature

Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world. ↗

— Norman Maclean

#geology #idaho #landscape #mountains #nature

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. ↗

— Henry Hazlitt

#any #art #consequences #consists #economics

If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year's model. The system attempts to remake people to fit its own presuppositions. If people's wants are not naturally insatiable we must make them so, in order to keep the system going. ↗

— Herman E. Daly

#consumerism #desire #economics #nature

Ours is a shockingly dead view of creation. We ourselves are the only things in the universe to which we grant an authentic vitality, and because of this we are not fully alive. ↗

— Frederick Turner

#nature #western-philosophy #nature

To get faster and better service, ring a bell. It’s the same principal as honking at someone in traffic. People respond well to it, and they seem to really enjoy it.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#better #considerate #customer-service #enjoy #faster

Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there. ↗

— Vine Deloria Jr.

#religion

Mr. Merrick, I'd like to speak with you." Mr. Merrick. He hated when teachers called him that, like he was an old man stopping by to learn a few math tricks. ↗

— Brigid Kemmerer

#math

So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.' Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction. A rain dance even more so. I thought I might finally have offended Loyd past the point of no return, like stealing the lobster from frozen foods that time, to get myself fired. But Loyd was just thinking. After a minute he said, 'No, it's not like that. It's not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to cause them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance.' In balance.' Really, it's like the spirits have made a deal with us.' And what is the deal?' I asked. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.' Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?' Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#prayer #religion #business

The mind becomes like that on which it feeds. ↗

— Elton Trueblood

#professor-emeritus #theologian #religion