#y

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen. ↗

— Wilkie Collins

#revelation #secrets #truth #love

History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#a-song-of-ice-and-fire #history #nature

There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#human-nature #savagery #war #nature

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony. ↗

— Benjamin Britten

#beautiful #beauty #cruel #disappointment #everlasting

The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#garden #halfway #meet #might #nature

I never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature. ↗

— Björk

#bjork #loneliness #nature #orgy #nature

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #stupidity #nature

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#man #stupidity #nature

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#perversion #security #suffering #nature

We should write because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance. We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in. We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not. ↗

— Julia Cameron

#writing #life