#v

In all Thénardier's outpourings, the words and gestures, the fury blazing in his eyes, this explosion of an evil nature brazenly exposed, the mixture of bravado and abjectness, arrogance, pettiness, rage, absurdity; the hodgepodge of genuine distress, and lying sentiment, the shamelessness of a vicious man rejoicing in viciousness, the bare crudity of an ugly soul -- in this eruption of all suffering and hatred there was something which was hideous as evil itself and still as poignant as truth. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#good-and-evil #poverty #suffering #nature

But, as I have said, the bugs had no interest in getting us…and no great curiosity or enthusiasm about us as such; from the cowardly cockroaches to the blind stolid ants they wanted only to be left alone to eat and breed and eat and breed, just like us. ↗

— William T. Vollmann

#perspective #nature

Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose. ↗

— Henry Gee

#nature

Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence. ↗

— Michael Denton

#biology #chemical-evolution #darwinism #evolution #naturalism

All you need to know how to perform what you perceive as miracle is to understand the true working mechanism of mother nature. ↗

— Toba Beta

#miracle #universal #nature

Evidentemente, muitos destes cegos estao a ser pisados, empurrados, esmurrados, é o efeito do pânico, um efeito natural, pode-se dizer, a natureza animal é mesmo assim, também a vegetal se comportaria de igual maneira se nao tivesse todas aquelas raízes a prendê-la no chão, e que bonito seria poder ver árvores do bosque a fugir ao incêndio. ↗

— José Saramago

#man #nature

Are people innately altruistic?" is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated--for good or ill--if only you find the right levers. ~ Levitt & Dubner, "Superfreakonomics ↗

— Levitt & Dubner

#incentives #innate #people #nature

Too often when we say we feel joyful, we’re really feeling manic. There is a frenetic nature to our joy, a whiff of panic; we’re afraid the moment might end abruptly. But then there are other moments when our joy is more solidly grounded. I am not speaking of a transcendental moment, of bliss, but something less. ↗

— Eric Weiner

#travel #nature

Vampire... un mot qui suscite peur et fascination. Il désigne une créature, un mort qui quitte sa tombe à la nuit pour boire le sang des vivants et qui revêt bien des formes au fil des siècles. Selon la tradition, certains traits le caractérisent toujours: sa soif de sang, ses forces et ses pouvoirs surnaturels. Des dangers toutefois le guettent et plusieurs signes trahissent sa nature. ↗

— Sally Regan

#nature

[I]ndividual readers may conceivably choose (or be led) to regard a given text as literary in cases where such a response is not shared by others, but until their individual responses lose their idiosyncratic nature by being adopted by a larger interpretive community, such responses will be regarded as being to a greater or lesser degree aberrant, and the offender will be regarded as lacking in good taste or good sense or both. ↗

— Patrick O'Neill

#narratology #nature