#on

History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever. ↗

— Emilie Autumn

#history #autumn

[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our “new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence” go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection. ↗

— Nicholas G. Carr

#science #imagination

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#decatur #dixie-beer #french-quarter #honeysuckle #louisiana

She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe. ↗

— Jeannette Walls

#common-sense #fashion #nonsense #victorian-era #nature

…unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#nature

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun. ↗

— Richard Louv

#nature #perfectionism #nature

We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence. ↗

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

#perception #reality #nature

Everything in excess Is opposed by nature. ↗

— Hippocrates

#nature #simplicity #nature

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. ↗

— Ronald Wright

#nature

I can't go back," said Towser. "Nor I," said Fowler. "They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser. "And me," said Fowler, "back into a man. ↗

— Clifford D. Simak

#dogs #science-fiction #science