#nature

When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#doyle #sherlock-holmes #nature

The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual. ↗

— Bruno Bettelheim

#psychology #nature

What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork. ↗

— Irène Némirovsky

#human-nature #society #nature

Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. ↗

— Walter Brueggemann

#nature

We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#oneness #seneca #nature

A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power. ↗

— Rachel Carson

#nature #science #nature

Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'. ↗

— Jostein Gaarder

#harmony #health #moderation #natural #philosophy

If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity -- to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future -- a declaration that things can be not only different but better. ↗

— Hanif Kureishi

#nature

But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in. ↗

— Gary Snyder

#gossip #naturalism #nature #part #spirit-of-place

It would seem that unless we see through and beyond the physical, we shall not even see the physical as we ought to see it: as the very vehicle for the glory of God ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#nature #spirituality #nature