#ss

Whoever is full of wisdom is naturally compassionate; in fact we recognize that someone has gained spiritual wisdom by seeing their compassionate behavior. . . . Individuals and countries with power need to develop wisdom and compassion, for without these attributes, there is a danger that the power will be used to oppress and exploit others. (31) ↗

— Ravi Ravindra

#spiritual-wisdom #wisdom #nature

Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch. And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest - the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways - and re-enter the woods. For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence. Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world's longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it. Perhaps then, having heard that silence and seen that darkness, he will grow humble before the place and begin to take it in - to learn from it what it is. As its sounds come into his hearing, and its lights and colors come into his vision, and its odors come into his nostrils, then he may come into its presence as he never has before, and he will arrive in his place and will want to remain. His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again. (pg. 27, "A Native Hill") ↗

— Wendell Berry

#darkness #humility #land #nature #rebirth

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#nature #strength #weakness #nature

but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#nature

[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing. ↗

— Aristophanes

#attributes #barter #character #demagoguery #government

Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our short sightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say "I want mine now," you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#human-nature #potential-for-greatness #nature

In the midst of her tears came the thought, "When people are in danger, they ask God to save them;" and, slipping down upon her knees, she said her prayer as she had never said it before, for when human help seems gone we turn to Him as naturally as lost children cry to their father, and feel sure that he will hear and answer them. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#compassion #god #hope #nature

It is human nature to try hardest to accomplish the very thing we are told is impossible.  Why?  Because innately we know that nothing's impossible. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#human-nature #impossibility #impossible #innate #richelle

The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get. ↗

— Robert Buettner

#fighting #human-nature #human-superiority #humanity #unfairness

We were of thirteen minds, like a tree, in which there is one Red-tail and eleven squirrel parts. ↗

— Cameron Conaway

#oneness #nature