#nature

I left them to it, the pointing of fingers on maps, the tracing of mountain villages, the tracks and contours on maps of larger scale, and basked for the one evening allowed to me in the casual, happy atmosphere of the taverna where we dined. I enjoyed poking my finger in a pan and choosing my own piece of lamb. I liked the chatter and the laughter from neighbouring tables. The gay intensity of talk - none of which I could understand, naturally - reminded me of left-bank Paris. A man from one table would suddenly rise to his feet and stroll over to another, discussion would follow, argument at heat perhaps swiftly dissolving into laughter. This, I thought to myself, has been happening through the centuries under this same sky, in the warm air with a bite to it, the sap drink pungent as the sap running through the veins of these Greeks, witty and cynical as Aristophanes himself, in the shadow, unmoved, inviolate, of Athene's Parthenon. ("The Chamois") ↗

— Daphne du Maurier

#greek #tavern #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

When we burn fossil fuel for energy we are, in qualitative terms, doing nothing more wrong than burning wood. Our wrongdoing, if that is an appropriate term, is taking energy from Gaia hundreds of times faster than it is naturally made available. We are sinning in a quantitative not a qualitative way. ↗

— James Lovelock

#nature

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#self-control #nature

A bird sings in the morning, an owl hoots at night...it's still a bloody bird. ↗

— Oliver Reed

#nature

Unfortunately, we-especially in the United States-have become increasingly mechanized, so that today we feel very strongly that if we can take anything out of human hands and especially out of the human heart and put it through a machine, we have made progress. Indeed, we flatter ourselves that we can make machines that think like human beings, while not always pausing to reflect that in the process we have also succeeded in making millions of human beings who can feel and think like machines. It is a sorry reflection. ↗

— Ashley Montagu

#philosophy #society #nature

Bet vai tu zini par manu bērnību? Vai tu zini, cik man bija sliktas mājas un cik daudz ļauna es tur dabūju iemācīties? Šķiet, ka tas nāk līdzi mantojumā, no citiem augumiem, bet no kā? No pirmā auguma, tā bija rakstīts bērnu grāmatās, un liekas, ka piepildās... Tāpēc nevaino mani, tad es savukārt nevainošu savus vecākus, kuri varētu vainot savējos un tā joprojām! ↗

— August Strindberg

#naturalism #original-sin #pelican #villains #nature

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#metaphor #nature