#natur

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. ↗

— Ronald Wright

#nature

There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#wills #nature

Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called "natural world." Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don't seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really. ↗

— Seanan McGuire

#science #nature

I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of of our fossils, radioactive at that. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#nature #science #nature

I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society. ↗

— Man Ray

#expression #liberty #nature

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#human-nature #psychology #unpleasant-ideas #nature

...What you're calling evil, is part of human nature. ↗

— Nikolas Schreck

#occult #paganism #satan #nature

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth. ↗

— E.L. Doctorow

#bias #fairness #ridicule #satire #truth

True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd; Something whose truth convinced at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#wit #nature

While it was well within their powers to toy around with mortals like hapless puppets, deeper human workings remained elusive to them. The heart, the soul, the very foundation of man’s nature—those were mysteries to the gods, for all their manipulations. ↗

— Hayden Thorne

#philosophy #nature