#nat

I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones. ↗

— Bruce Chatwin

#patagonia #life

The true Indian sets no price upon either his property or his labor. His generosity is limited only by his strength and ability. He regards it as an honor to be selected for difficult or dangerous service and would think it shameful to ask for any reward, saying rather: "Let the person I serve express his thanks according to his own bringing up and his sense of honor. Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!. What is Silence? It is the Great Mystery! The Holy Silence is His voice! ↗

— Charles Alexander Eastman

#life #life-lessons #native-american #wisdom #life

To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair. ↗

— Eric Hoffer

#anomie #belonging #the-true-believer #life

I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schools? Or, oh, Christina, that filthy slut, if she puts out for a man like that, I imagine she puts out for anyone. You stay away from her. It wasn't like that at all. Maybe it would have been easier if it was, just like ticking a box. Are you the Madonna, or the whore? The victim, or the vixen? The Sabine, or the skank? But nothing in life is ever that simple. ↗

— Nenia Campbell

#female-characters #feminism #hypocrisy #life #purity

Stories nurture our connection to place and to each other. They show us where we have been and where we can go. They remind us of how to be human, how to live alongside the other lives that animate this planet. ... When we lose stories, our understanding of the world is less rich, less true. ↗

— Susan J. Tweit

#nature #stories #life

Fortunately, God made all varieties of people with a wide variety of interests and abilities. He has called people of every race and color who have been hurt by life in every manner imaginable. Even the scars of past abuse and injury can be the means of bringing healing to another. What wonderful opportunities to make disciples! ↗

— Charles R. Swindoll

#comparison #discipleship #god #leadership #witnessing

A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.” [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker] ↗

— Winston Churchill

#life

And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#life #life

My life has become a dismal sigh fettered by pangs of grief and anguished weeping. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#discouragement #giving-up #grief #hopelessness #resignation

Don't you get it? Can you imagine the...the heroism? That's what grace is all about. He didn't even think for one second about himself. All he thought about was that little girl, and saving her life. ↗

— Charles Sheehan-Miles

#heroism #war #imagination