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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #nature
Ollowains Blick wanderte über die Waldterrassen. Er könnte hier Stunden sitzen, ohne des Schauens müde zu werden. Der Anblick der Natur vermag die Seele zu heilen, hatte ihm seine Mutter vor Jahrhunderten erzählt. Damals war er zu ungeduldig gewesen, um sich dieser Wahrheit zu öffnen. Und er war auch zu jung gewesen, um an einer verletzten Seele zu leiden. Erst die Zeit hatte ihn von der Weisheit in den Worten seiner Mutter überzeugt. ↗
Each thing organizes the space around it, rebuffing or sidling up against other things; each thing calls, gestures, beckons to other beings or battles them for our attention; things expose themselves to the sun or retreat among the shadows, shouting with their loud colors or whispering with their seeds; rocks snag lichen spores from the air and shelter spiders under their flanks; clouds converse with the fathomless blue and metamorphose into one another; they spill rain upon the land, which gathers in rivulets and carves out canyons… ↗
People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost. We kill to eat, we cut down trees to build our homes, we exploit other people and the earth. Sacrifice - of nature, of the interests of others, even of our earlier selves - appears to be an inescapable part of our condition, the unavoidable price of all our achievements. A successful ritual is one that addresses both aspects of our predicament, recalling us to the shamefulness of our deeds at the same time it celebrates what the poet Frederick Turner calls "the beauty we have paid for with our shame." Without the double awareness pricked by such rituals, people are liable to find themselves either plundering the earth without restraint or descending into self-loathing and misanthropy. Perhaps it's not surprising that most of us today bring one of those attitudes or the other to our conduct in nature. ↗
Referring to Jumper the spider, who needs to hide himself in human form, and he's learning to act like a human. "I'm sure I can learn to walk faster than that," he said desperately. "But you'll also need to learn the nuances of human behavior. Such as not going around naked." "What's wrong with being natural?" he demanded. "Humans aren't natural. They are girt about by all manner of conventions. It will take time for you to catch up with them all. ↗
According to this model, human beings are, at least in one aspect, sensation-receiving machines; and although our receptory apparatus is competent to select and organize outward stimuli within the narrow range necessary for physical survival within our environment, it does not necessarily tell us very much about the nature of that environment. People, in other words, have little access to the possible world existing beyond their sensations. ↗
