“nature has no instructions for mankind except that our poor beleaguered humanist-democratic way of life, our fantasies of the individual’s high worth, our sense that the weak, no less than the strong, have a right to survive, are absurd. when edmund of /king lear/ said excitedly, ‘nature, be thou my goddess!’ he knew whereof he spoke.”

— joyce carol oates, /against nature/

11:25 pm  •  15 February 2013

“it’s going to be difficult, but that’s no surprise. the story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. look hard. risk that.”

— cheryl strayed

10:37 pm  •  25 December 2012  •  5 notes

…for i have learned
to look on nature, not as in the hour
of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
the still, sad music of humanity,
not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
to chasten and subdue. and i have felt
a presence that disturbs me with the joy
of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean, and the living air,
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
a motion and a spirit, that impels
all thinking things, all objects of all thought,
and rolls through all things. therefore am i still
a lover of the meadows and the woods,
and mountains; and of all that we behold
from this green earth; of all the mighty world
of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
and what perceive; well pleased to recognize
in nature and the language of the sense,
the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
of all my moral being.

2:37 pm  •  1 July 2012  •  1 note