#natur

Much can be gained be contrasting a theory with its alternatives, even ones that look too extreme to be true. You can really understand something when you know what it is not. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#nature

Men are not angels,” Akhmar affirmed. “And so men have the chance to be noble, in a way that angels cannot. ↗

— J. Leigh Bralick

#bravery #human-nature #nobility #men

There are mystical, unbreakable bonds between all members of the natural world including humans and animals. Whether or not we remember or acknowledge this relatedness, it still exists. ↗

— Elizabeth Eiler

#metaphysics #nature #nature

I hate it when storm clouds roll in, heralded by dazzling claps of thunder and lightning that boast an ocean of tears. This majestic performance of bad temper manages to overshadow my pathetic attempts at pouting. No one broods like Mother Nature, hence she steals all the attention I was sulking after. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#lightning #mother-nature #pouting #rain #richelle

It’s more eerie to be alone in a city that’s lit up and functioning than one that’s a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards. ↗

— Isaac Marion

#dystopia #nature

In nature there is nothing melancholy ↗

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#nature

I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to. I think about the reader. I care about the reader. Not “audience.” Not “readership.” Just the reader. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#nature

There is in every intellect a natural exigency for a true concept of God: we are born with the thirst to know and to see Him, and therefore it cannot be otherwise. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#intellect #knowledge #nature

…if a thing can be said to be, to exist, then such is the nature of these expansive times that this thing which is must suffer to be touched. Ours is a time of connection; the private, and we must accept this, and it’s a hard thing to accept, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted. And if you’re thinking how awful these sentiments are, you are perfectly correct, these are awful times, but you must remember as well that this has always been the chiefest characteristic of the Present, to everyone living through it; always, throughout history, and so far as I can see for all the days and years to come until the sun and the stars fall down and the clocks have all ground themselves to expiry and the future has long long shaded away into Time Immemorial: the Present is always an awful place to be. ↗

— Tony Kushner

#future #present #privacy #suffering #time

We do not realize the sound the world makes-unless of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra. Breaking waves. Whipping wind. Falling rain. Squawking birds. All throughout the universe, time resumed and nature sang. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#nature