Quotes by Authors - Page 293

Rain is the purest of natural happenings.
Will Advise
Number ... should not be understood solely as a construction of consciousness, but also as an archetype and thus as a constituent of nature both without and within.
Marie-Louise von Franz
We love surfers for the same reasons we have always admired doctors and pilots and firemen and shamans, for the same reasons we admire excellent soldiers: because despite themselves they have bowed to a force much greater than themselves, which in this case is the wave, and submitted to the gnarly rigors of its discipline. They have allowed themselves to be shaped and polished by the sea. They have given themselves up to this greater force, day after day, year after year. Crushed and punished, battered into something tempered and resilient, and sharpened to an edge by constant refinement. They are warriors in the best sense: by bending to the often brutal demands of surfing they have transformed themselves into beings who can respond to great violence with grace and humility. And beauty.
Peter Heller
If there is something that I have learned from my time on this planet of ours, something that I can share and that I know to be true, it’s that we disconnect ourselves from nature and the wilderness too many times. Our birthplace. Our home.
Jellis Vaes
There, on the far side of of the Atlantic, would be Maine, but despite the shared ocean, her island and this one were worlds apart. Where Inishmaan was gray and brown, its fragile man-made soil supporting only the hardiest of low-growing plants, the fertile Quinnipeague invited tall pines in droves, not to mention vegetables, flowers, and improbable, irrepressible herbs. Lifting her head, eyes closed now, she breathed in the damp Irish air and the bit of wood smoke that drifted on the cold ocean wind. Quinnipeague smelled of wood smoke, too, since early mornings there could be chilly, even in summer. But the wood smoke would clear by noon, giving way to the smell of lavender, balsam, and grass. If the winds were from the west, there would be fry smells from the Chowder House; if from the south, the earthiness of the clam flats; if from the northeast, the purity of sweet salt air.
Barbara Delinsky
I like nature and I enjoy walking through the forest admiring its beauty and breathing not just the fresh air but, also the quietness and peacefulness of the place. There I feel serene. I feel I am accepted just the way I am whenever I arrive and for as long as I stay. Yes, there it doesn’t matter how I look, what country I come from, if I am from rich or poor family, what is my education, income, religion, sexual orientation and color of skin. It doesn’t even care if my hair looks messy and whether I wear the latest fashion cloths.
Nico J. Genes
Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand. It's a fatal symphony of echolocation, a siren call to the sympathetic.
Marina Keegan
I see foxes often, but always they are crossing fallow fields in the distance. Gold flecks on faraway expanses of green. Magnetic to the meandering eye. Enigmatic, unreachable.
Sara Baume
A dam is monumentally static; it tries to bring a river under control, to regulate its seasonal pattern of floods and low flow.
Patrick McCully
To save our dying earth, any government which is not environmentalist must go because on earth there are thousands of governments but there in only one earth! Continuing with the eco-traitor stupid governments means an environmental suicide! Enemies of nature are real barbarians and there is no place for these savages in our civilisation!
Mehmet Murat ildan
White clouds, blue sky.
Laiah Gifty Akita
A river flow freely from its source.
Lailah Gifty Akita
When the religious Cowper confesses in the opening lines of his address to the famous Yardley oak, that the sense of awe and reverence it inspired in him would have made him bow himself down and worship it but for the happy fact that his mind was illumined with the knowledge of the truth, he is but saying what many feel without in most cases recognizing the emotion for what it is—the sense of the supernatural in nature.
William Henry Hudson
One of humankind's most enduring misconceptions is that of nature's bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it is indestructible.
Mark Kurlansky
The true order is what the wind creates by scattering the leaves.
Marty Rubin
Nature abhors a virgin - a frozen asset.
Clare Boothe Luce
The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.
Edward O. Wilson
Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.
Norman Maclean
The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You see one just before dusk that summer, standing at the perimeter of the meadow so it can step back to the forest and vanish. You can't help imagining the still, frozen nights behind it, so cold that the slightest motion is monumental. I have found their bodies, half drifted over in snow, no sign of animal attack or injury. Just toppled over one night with ice working into their lungs. You wouldn't want to stand outside for more than a few minutes in that kind of weather. If you lived through only one of those winters the way this elk has, you would write books about it. You would become a shaman. You would be forever changed. That elk from the winter stands there on the summer evening, watching from beside the forest. It keeps its story to itself.
Craig Childs
Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.
Annie Dillard
Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf.
Emily Brontë
How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion. The seedpods of stitchwort hang ready for delightful popping between thumb and finger, and later the bladder campion offers a larger, if less crisp, globe to burst. In the autumn, acorns, beechnuts, and conkers bedizen their path, with all their manifold possibilities of fun. In the summer, there is an assortment of honeys to be sucked from bindweed flowers, held fragile and fragrant to hungry lips, and the tiny funnels of honeysuckle and clover blossoms to taste.
Miss Read
The infinitesimal seedlings became a forest of trees that grew courteously, correcting the distances between themselves as they shaped themselves to the promptings of available light and moisture, tempering the climate and the temperaments of the Scots, as the driest land became moist and the wettest land became dry, seedlings finding a mean between extremes, and the trees constructing a moderate zone for themselves even into what I would have called tundra, until I understood the fact that Aristotle taught, while walking in a botanic garden, that the middle is fittest to discern the extremes. ("Interim")
William S. Wilson
We strike our blow, even as Pierre has said. We strike at the coppice that you so desire. We strike there because it is the very heart of the forest. There the secret life of the forest runs at full tide. We know - and you know! Something that, destroyed, will take the heart out of the forest - will make it know us for its masters."("Women Of The Woods")
Abraham Grace Merritt
The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it.
Jules Renard
Victory takes sides on people who are more compatible with nature and future.
Toba Beta
Rights and duties, sounded more entertaining than duties and rights.
Toba Beta
This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall. Still its branches wave in the wind, as it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel’s nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast,—the hill is the hulk. Now, now’s the moment! The manikins at its base are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly and majestic it starts! as it were only swayed by a summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy, returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these rocks , advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear.I went down and measured it. It was about four feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already divested it of its branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the hillside as if it had been made of glass, and the tender cones of one year’s growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and marked off the mill-logs it will make. And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this afternoon ceased to exist. Its sapling top had expanded to this January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come. Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is preparing [to] lay his axe at the root of that also.
Henry David Thoreau
I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I hadn ever before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake" feeling sure I was going to learn something.
John Muir
It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.
Michel de Montaigne
To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.
Dee Brown
... there's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.
Rob Schultheis
We must plant trees, grow gardens instead of lawns, ride bicycles when we can and support responsible local businesses over big brands.
Bryant McGill
When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
Eckhart Tolle
While the government is "studying" and funding and organizing its Big Thought, nothing is being done. But the citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem. A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it - he is doing that work...A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways.(pg.87, "Think Little")
Wendell Berry
You must carry on my spirit. It can no longer be carried by a god. It must be taken up by all of you. - Pan
Rick Riordan
Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.
Criss Jami
If you are looking for a career that may induce a myriad of health conditions into you, I can recommend working at the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA.
Steven Magee
Entrepreneurs don't have weekends or birthdays or holidays. Every day is my weekend, my birthday, my holiday. OR, every day is my work day. Mostly it's a choice.
Richie Norton
God is not some lesser employee, as many try to make Him out to be: rather He is the ultimate Treasure. He works in a man; He works on a man; He works through a man; He works around a man. Know that He does far more than simply work for a man. And yet, even as He Himself needs no one else, everyone else is ever in need of Him.
Criss Jami
Be robust enough to work more than a robot!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it.
Patricia Highsmith
As I indicated in an earlier chapter, it is so important to pause and think through some of these basic issues while you are young, before the pressures of job and family become distracting. Everyone must deal with the eternal questions sooner or later. You will benefit, I think, from doing that work now. As I said earlier, whether you are an atheist, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, a New Ager, an agnostic, or a Christian, the questions confronting the human family are the same. Only the answers will differ.
James C. Dobson
Ramalama was moving higher in the sky already, the day was getting on. He was going to be late getting to San Fedora for his meeting with the Sheriff. And as a bounty hunter – even a good one with a lot of work, time is money. It seemed today that time was running out for Beck the Badfeller.
Christina Engela
The famous split windowSplits had the KDF dash until 1953, which had two glove compartments. Note rear “w” bonnet and small round taillights. There were no indicators like today’s cars – just pop-up indicators that work with an electric servo, called ‘trafficators’ or ‘semaphores’. 6v electrics. Small, flat front windscreen.
Christina Engela
Work hard and take risks. Try it before you confirm it is difficult!
Israelmore Ayivor
Plant your tiny seeds and keep watering them every day. Soon, they’ll grow.
Israelmore Ayivor
17. One of the secrets of successful living is found in the word balance, referring to the avoidance of harmful extremes. We need food, but we should not overeat. We should work, but not make work our only activity. We should play, but not let play rule us. Throughout life, it will be important to find the safety of the middle ground rather than the imbalance of the extremes.
James C. Dobson
To become a better you, be diligent and never let the charms of procrastination and excuses seduce you to fall for mediocrity.
Israelmore Ayivor
A job is the ultimate pyramid scheme.
Ken Poirot
I’m trying to help,” Albert said.“By paying him with beer?”“I paid him what he wanted, and Sam was okay with it. You were at the meeting,” Albert said. “Look, how else do you think you get someone like Orc to spend hours in the hot sun working? Astrid seems to think people will work just because we ask them to. Maybe some will. But Orc?”Lana could see his point. “Okay. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you.”“It’s okay. I’m getting used to it,” Albert said. “Suddenly I’m the bad guy. But you know what? I didn’t make people the way they are. If kids are going to work, they’re going to want something back.”“If they don’t work, we all starve.”“Yeah. I get that,” Albert said with more than a tinge of sarcasm. “Only, here’s the thing: Kids know we won’t let them starve as long as there’s any food left, right? So they figure, hey, let someone else do the work. Let someone else pick cabbages and artichokes.”Lana wanted to get back to her run. She needed to finish, to run to the FAYZ wall. But there was something fascinating about Albert. “Okay. So how do you get people to work?”He shrugged. “Pay them.”“You mean, money?”“Yeah. Except guess who had most of the money in their wallets and purses when they disappeared? Then a few kids stole what was left in cash registers and all. So if we start back using the old money we just make a few thieves powerful. It’s kind of a problem.”“Why is a kid going to work for money if they know we’ll share the food, anyway?” Lana asked.“Because some will do different stuff for money. I mean, look, some kids have no skills, right? So they pick the food for money. Then they take the money and spend it with some kid who can maybe cook the food for them, right? And that kid maybe needs a pair of sneakers and some other kid has rounded up all the sneakers and he has a store.”Lana realized her mouth was open. She laughed. The first time in a while.“Fine. Laugh,” Albert said, and turned away.“No, no, no,” Lana hastened to say. “No, I wasn’t making fun of you. It’s just that, I mean, you’re the only kid that has any kind of a plan for anything.
Michael Grant
Rather than worrying about work, schedules, and deadlines, I felt at peace with God. He was in control. The world at large would not crumble because I turned off my iPhone. This is how it's supposed to be. For the first time in who knows how long, I felt like myself. Fully alive. Fully present. And fully aware of God's goodness.
Craig Groeschel
People who succeed in business aren't afraid to hear feedback from their customers -- they actually thrive from it.
Adam Kirk Smith
Do not call any work menial until you have watched a proud person do it.
Robert Brault
It’s unthinkable, now to live as her parents had done, going to work from nine to five and enjoying the benefits of the newly-formed health and education services. What paradise it had seemed! Now, in order to pay their exorbitant mortgages, and ever more exorbitant fuel prices, British adults have to work long hours – the longest, it is said, in Europe… Everyone they know, everyone they see, is just like them, living in houses like these, reading the same papers, seeing the same films and TV programmes and plays, buying from the same shops and sending their children to the same schools; and they think it will go on for ever, either ever-mounting property prices cushioning them. But it can’t.
Amanda Craig
A servant who serves excellently from his whole heart with due courage and humility is never a servant, but a master of his work!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
I would never sabotage you, Mya.” He wiped away one of my stray tears with his fingertips. “Of course, deep down I did want you to stay, but I had nothing but nice things to say about you. I even said they’d be foolish not to hire you, but—” “But?” I glared at him. “But what?” “But if they thought the low-ass salaries they were offering were good enough for you, they needed to increase them exponentially or move along to someone else. I thought you deserved more.” “Is that all?” “No,” he said, looking into my eyes. “I also needed to personally interview each of the CEOs myself. Needed to make sure each one was a good fit for you, and that whoever you worked for next was already married.” I opened my mouth to ask him if he was being serious, but he beat me to it. “Yes,” he said, smirking. “Yes, I ‘seriously’ did need to do that.” “What does the CEO being married have to do with anything, Michael? What if I have no interest in seeing you after I quit?” “You do, so we’re not even going to entertain that line of conversation.” He rolled his eyes. “If the CEO is already married, I won’t have to worry about ‘this’ happening at your next place of employment, and I can be somewhat less jealous.” “How selfish of you.” I couldn’t believe him, but for some reason I couldn’t help the smile that was forming on my face.
Whitney G.
One other thing I learned from working in a company was that the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They're actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that's not how they really feel. They just grumble out of habit. If you told them to think for themselves, and make their own decisions and take responsibility for them, they'd be clueless.
Haruki Murakami
Lisbon, to me, is the Lisbon of Pessoa. Just like London is Woolf’s, or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s. Barcelona is Gaudí's and Rome is da Vinci’s. You see them in every crevice and hear their echoes in every cathedral. I’d like to be the child, or rather, the mother of a city but I neither have a home nor a resting place. My race is humankind. My religion is kindness. My work is love and, well, my city is the walls of your heart.
Kamand Kojouri
The work that we are doing for God should be of a higher priority than what we do for man
Sunday Adelaja