Quotes

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  • They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life. – Jane Austen

  • The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope. – Wendell Berry

  • Our roots are in the dark, the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing? Instead of around and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in a sky full of orbiting spy eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below;…

  • The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of…

  • Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little…

  • Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. – Nietzsche

  • The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. – Dante Alighieri

  • A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. – Albert Einstein

  • I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t. – Mark Twain

  • I believe the only reality is how we treat each other. The morality comes from the absence of any grander scheme, not from the presence of any grander scheme. – Joss Whedon

  • You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape –the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured…

  • Masochists are people that have pleasure confused with pain. In a world that has television confused with entertainment, Doritos confused with food, and Dan Quayle confused with a national political leader, masochists are clearly less mixed-up than the rest of us. – P. J. O’Rourke