#nature

The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases. ↗

— John Mason Brown

#nature

Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient. ↗

— Allan Bloom

#nature #rousseau #nature

No one, from pontiffs to professors, has a monopoly on the truth. In the end, we are all just travelers--not scientists or mystics or any one brand of thinker. By nature, we are scientists and mystics, reductionists and holists, left-brained and right-brained, mixed up creatures trying to catch an occasional glimpse of the truth. The best we can do is to be tolerant of both sides of our nature--knowing that these reflect the twin aspect of the universe--and learn from whatever wisdom is offered. ↗

— David Darling

#wisdom #nature

Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time? ↗

— Herman Melville

#reproach #waste #nature

Who will bear witness to these small islands and oases of wildness as land is divided and sold to become strip malls, housing developments,and parking lots? What happens to the natural history here? We must bear witness. ↗

— Joni L. James

#landscape #nature #wildness #nature

Yet gold all is not, that doth gold seem, Nor all good knights, that shake well spear and shield: The worth of all men by their end esteem, And then praise, or due reproach them yield. ↗

— Edmund Spenser

#human-nature #poetry #men

To be awake is to be alive. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#nature #walden #nature

The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#universe #nature

Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite. ↗

— John Muir

#nature #nature

The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability. ↗

— David McCullough

#morality #technology #nature