#phil

If you ask a tree how he feels to know that he's spreading his fragrance and making people happy, I don't think a tree looks at it that way. I am just like that, and it is just my nature to be like this. ↗

— Jaggi Vasudev

#philosophic #nature

Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow? ↗

— Annie Dillard

#philosophy #nature

A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character… ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#liberty #philosophy #nature

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard. ↗

— George Santayana

#philosophy #poetry #music

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat. ↗

— Plato

#nature

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#philosophy #nature

Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#philosophy #nature

Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#man #philosophy #nature

The world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural ignorance, which is man's true state. The sciences have two extremes which meet. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself. Those between the two, who have departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other, have some smattering of this vain knowledge and pretend to be wise. These trouble the world and are bad judges of everything. The people and the wise constitute the world; these despise it, and are despised. They judge badly of everything, and the world judges rightly of them. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#men

Believe in human beings - not all are good, but deep down all can be. But that doesn't mean you need to hang around crappy people and try to turn them around. ↗

— Jonas Eriksson

#philosophy #nature