#nature

Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#nature

Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#nature

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. ↗

— George Orwell

#leftists #socialism #nature

O que é preciso é ser-se natural e calmo Na felicidade ou na infelicidade, Sentir como quem olha, Pensar como quem anda, E quando se vai morrer, lembrar-se de que o dia morre, E que o poente é belo e é bela a noite que fica... ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#nature

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think. ↗

— Peter Watts

#humanity #nature #nature

...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91] ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#native-americans #nature #nature

...it occurred that the birds, whose twitters and repeated songs sounded so pretty and affirming of nature and the coming day, might actually, in a code known only to other birds," be the birds each saying 'Get away' or 'This branch is mine!' or 'This tree is mine! I'll kill you! Kill, kill!' Or any manner of dark, brutal, or self-protective stuff--they might be listening to war cries. The thought came from nowhere and made his spirits dip from some reason. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#perspective #nature

We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#ingersoll #poetry #present #reason #robert

Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks. ↗

— Gary Snyder

#naturalism #poetry #spirituality #nature

Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear. ↗

— Michael Simpson

#property #sun #water #nature