#ore

The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ... ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#balance #collecting #lies #more-terrible #old-woman

The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#existentialism #forever #heaven #paradise #present

A volley of hailstones began abruptly, filled the woods with a frenzied percussion & ended on the sudden. ↗

— David Mitchell

#nature #nature

Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others. ↗

— John Vaillant

#hunting #nature #poaching #russia #tiger

What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshakable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. ↗

— Jay Griffiths

#nature #nature

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very bright, riding through the empty blue sky. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#island-of-dr-moreau #moon #moonlight #nature #night

The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveler, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#forest #horror #nature #nature

I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important flexibility of our primate forebears, while most mammals had sacrificed it in specializing their digits. Carnivores run, stab, and scratch. My cat may manipulate me psychologically, but he'll never type or play the piano. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#cat #evolution #panda #science #thumb

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology. ↗

— Fareed Zakaria

#international-relations #national-policy #theology

The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity. ↗

— John Fowles

#nature #nature-of-man #nature