#wilde

Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatever he does. He is in fact a wilderness advocate of a certain kind. It is when he respects and nurtures the wilderness of his soil and his plants that his garden seems to flourish most. Wildness, he has found, resides not only out there, but right here: in his soil, in his plants, even in himself... But wildness is more a quality than a place, and though humans can't manufacture it, they can nourish and husband it... The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#gardening #life #nature #nurture #wild

He was a man of most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the most intellectual men I ever met." "I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#oscar-wilde #imagination

Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious. ↗

— Peter Heller

#outdoors #risk #wilderness #freedom

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#wilde #writing #life

Our inability to think beyond our own species, or to be able to co-habit with other life forms in what is patently a massive collaborative quest for survival, is surely a malady that pervades the human soul. ↗

— Lawrence Anthony

#environmental #environmentalism #species #wilderness #life

The shots had dispersed the birds; there remained only two marabous, standing between ten and twenty paces away and plunged in reverie. They were like two old men with bald heads pressed between the shoulders. ↗

— Henryk Sienkiewicz

#wilderness #men

You have a divine right to abundance, and if you are anything less than a millionaire, you haven't had your fair share. ↗

— Stuart Wilde

#money

Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others. ↗

— John Vaillant

#hunting #nature #poaching #russia #tiger

Our incredible bewilderment (wilderness separation) blinds us from seeing that our many personal and global problems primarily result from our assault of and separation from the natural creation process within and around us. Our estrangement from nature leaves us wanting,and when we want there is never enough. Our insatiable wanting is called greed. It is a major source of our destructive dependencies and violence. ↗

— Michael J. Cohen

#creation #dependencies #estrangement #global #greed

When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words: 'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?' 'I am sorry... I fear not.' 'You see where you are now! ↗

— Charles Ricketts

#empathy #oscar-wilde #religion #self-righteousness #religion