#sm

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. ↗

— Stephen Crane

#mankind #naturalism #nature

Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#nature

There is no need to always require a smile! Happiness is more of a look in the eyes, than a smile on the face! ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#quotes-on-happiness #smile-happiness-expression #the-expression-of-happiness #the-nature-of-happiness #nature

They want to be natural, the anti-social little beasts. They just don't realize that everyone's good depends on everyone's cooperation. ↗

— Richard Adams

#nature

I first believed without any hesitation in the existence of the soul, and then I wondered about the secret of its nature. I persevered and strove in search of the soul, and found at last that I myself was the cover over my own soul. I realized that that in me which believed and that in me that wondered, that which was found at last, was no other than my soul. I thanked the darkness that brought me to the light, and I valued this veil that prepared for me the vision in which I saw myself reflected, the vision produced in the mirror of my soul. Since then, I have seen all souls as my soul, and realized my soul as the soul of all. And what bewilderment it was when I realized that I alone was, if there were anyone, that I am whatever and whoever exists, and that I shall be whoever there will be in the future. ↗

— Hazrat Inayat Khan

#nature

I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory. ↗

— Norman Mailer

#fascism #nature

This for many people is what is most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing. It's not as though the rest of us don't countenance the killing of tens of millions of animals every year. Yet for some reason we feel more comfortable with the mechanical killing practiced, out of view and without emotion by industrial agriculture. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#animal-rights #animal-welfare #animals #food #hunting

The sky is an enormous man. ↗

— Emanuel Swedenborg

#nature #paganism #sky #nature

When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one's body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism. ↗

— Dag Hammarskjöld

#nature #pantheism #nature

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. ↗

— John Muir

#greed #nature #nature