#so

These sociopaths,' he said. 'What do they feel like? Inside?' Isabel smiled. 'Unmoved,' she said. 'They feel unmoved. Look at a cat when it does something wrong. It looks quite unmoved. Cats are sociopaths, you see. It's their natural state. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#nature

Even though we've been dating over a year, I still get a small thrill when i hear the words my girlfriend come out of his mouth, especially when he emphasizes the first word the way he was doing now. I had been awake for five minutes and already he had called me twice. I kind of liked this possessive thing. ↗

— Alicia Thompson

#psych-major-syndrome #dating

Nothing is inanimate; what is the rest is our interpretation. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #inanimate #inanimate-objects #interpretation #literature

It is in the nature of man that he is antagonistic toward the others of his sex. Each man sees in another a potential competitor for the limited rewards of male success, and the hostility which arises between them is a part of the natural balance of human life. It is possible, as in the case of father and son, that a closeness will arise between two men which threatens the functional hostility of each. It is the duty of society to provide an artificial means of encouraging the proper degree of antagonism. ↗

— C.S. Friedman

#scifi #society-building #men

Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable. ↗

— Howard Pattee

#philosophy #science #systems #nature

Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial-notoriously less stable and less inherent than the nature of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit. ↗

— Harry G. Frankfurt

#nature

...the rule among the human race – a rule that naturally admits of exceptions – is that the reputedly hard are the weak whom nobody wanted, and that the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that gentleness which the vulgar herd mistakes for weakness. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#sodom-and-gomorrah #nature

It is not the reverence for words, but for their meaning that determines our deepness of comprehension of a given assertion about Nature. ↗

— Felix Alba-Juez

#science #nature

La desconfianza, el disimulo, la reserva cortés que cierra el paso al extraño, la ironía, todas, en fin, las oscilaciones psíquicas con que al eludir la mirada ajena nos eludimos a nosotros mismos, son rasgos de gente dominada, que teme y que finge frente al señor. Es revelador que nuestra intimidad jamás aflore de manera natural sin el acicate de la fiesta, el alcohol o la muerte. […] Para salir de sí mismo el siervo necesita saltar barreras, embriagarse, olvidar su condición. Vivir a solas, sin testigos. Solamente en la soledad se atreve a ser. ↗

— Octavio Paz

#nature

Being in nature refreshes us by ... allowing us to surrender to involuntary attention: the effortless and often enjoyable noticing of sensory stimuli in our environment. ↗

— Jennifer Ackerman

#nature