#nature

I confess that neither the structure of language, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#nature

It may be underfunded and at times mismanaged, but the [Endangered Species] Act is an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the subjection of women, child labor, segregation. The Endangered Species Act is a zero-tolerance law: no new extinctions. It keeps eyes on the ground with legal backing-the gun may be in the holster most of the time, but its available if necessary to keep species from disappearing. I discovered in my travels that a law protecting all animals and plants, all of nature, might be as revolutionary-and as American-as the Declaration of Independence. ↗

— Joe Roman

#endangered-species-act #patriotism #protection #wildlife #nature

All evil, all injustice, all harm that one does to someone else—in sum, all deviation from man's normative nature—in a much more fundamental way and in a far more ultimate sense one does to oneself, and not just metaphorically but literally. ↗

— Fazlur Rahman

#nature

Die gesamte den Sinnen wahrnehmbare Welt ist gewissermaßen ein von Gottes Finger geschriebenes Buch, d. h. sie ist geschaffen durch göttliche Kraft, und die einzelnen Geschöpfe sind gewissermaßen Schriftzeichen, nicht nach menschlichem Belieben erfundene, sondern durch göttlichen Entscheid festgelegte, um die Weisheit Gottes im Bereich der unsichtbaren Dinge zu offenbaren. ↗

— Hugo v. St. Viktor

#buch-der-natur #ding #gott #mittelalterliche-semiotik #schriftzeichen

Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What? ↗

— David Mitchell

#daughter #father #growing-up #human-nature #identity

At dawn the waves looked like mountain ranges tipped with gold as sunbeams slanted low under burgundy clouds. ↗

— David Mitchell

#nature #sun #water #waves #nature

He was a natural Protestant when I met him.", Em would say. "He protested everything. ↗

— Jerry Pinto

#nature

The air was still. It was that hour before evening when the sun sheds great horizontal beams just above the horizon and the air itself reveals levels of dust and insect life previously unthought of. ↗

— Valerie Martin

#nature

Sound the tocsin of national peril and hordes of well-meaning folk with nothing much to do always materialize from nowhere. They itch to meddle in great matters of which their comprehension is usually pretty dim, and have no objection to getting their names and pictures in the papers. ↗

— Leslie McFarlane

#politics #nature

O talento natural é como a força de um atleta. Pode-se nascer com mais ou menos faculdades, mas ninguém consegue ser um atleta simplesmente por ter nascido alto ou forte ou rápido. O que faz um atleta, ou um artista é o trabalho , o ofício e a técnica. A inteligência com que se nasce é simplesmente a munição. Para se chegar a fazer alguma coisa com ela é necessário transformarmos a nossa mente numa arma de precisão. ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#nature