Natural Instinct Quotes

CHARACTER of the HAPPY WARRIOR. Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he Whom every Man in arms should wish to be? - It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought: Whose high endeavours are an inward light That make the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 10 But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doom'd to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! ~ William Wordsworth

It is clear that something is seriously lacking in the way we humans are going about things. But what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values, I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness-or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner value emerge. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

There is no instinct like that of the heart. ~ George Gordon Byron

But then, poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.
No: that's wrong. It's because you dont dare to hope, you are afraid to hope. Not afraid of the extent of hope of which you are capable, but that you - the frail web of bone and flesh snaring that fragile temeritous boundless aspirant sleepless with dream and hope - cannot match it; as Ratliff would say, Knowing always you wont never be man enough to do the harm and damage you would do if you were just man enough. - and, he might add, or maybe I do it for him, thank God for it. Ay, thank God for it or thank anything else for it that will give you any peace after it's too late; peace in which to coddle that frail web and its unsleeping ensnared anguish both on your knee and whisper to it: There, there, it's all right; I know you are brave. ~ William Faulkner

In itself, no doubt, the natural and moderate satisfaction of the sexual instinct is a matter quite indifferent to morality. It is only in relation to something else that the satisfaction of a natural instinct can be said to be good or bad. ~ Aldous Huxley

But it is serpentine logic, for it simply compounds the old legal spirit. It is the natural instinct of the once-antinomian prodigal who, when awakened, thinks in terms of working his way back into the favor of his father.38 ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

In the name of being social, we learn to ignore our natural instinct.
Society keeps dictating do's and don'ts which we keep obeying day in and day out. ~ Chitralekha Paul

Successful artistic parents seem very rarely to give birth to equally successful artistic sons and daughters, and I suspect it may be because the urge to create, which must always be partly the need to escape everyday reality, is better fostered
despite modern educational theory
not by a sympathetic and 'creative' childhood environment, but the very opposite, by pruning and confining natural instinct. ~ John Fowles

thus it is that egoists have always the last word; having posited at the start that their resolution is unshakeable, the more susceptible the feeling to which one appeals in them to make them abandon their resolution, the more reprehensible they find, not themselves who resist that appeal, but those who put them under the necessity of resisting it, so that their own harshness may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty without having any effect in their eyes but to aggravate the culpability of the person who is so indelicate as to be hurt, to be in the right, and to cause them thus treacherously the pain of acting against their natural instinct of pity. ~ Marcel Proust

What is instinct? It is the natural tendency in one when filled with dismay to turn to his wife. ~ Finley Peter Dunne

Ambitious young women today are taught to ignore or suppress every natural instinct, if it conflicts with the feminist agenda posed on them. All literary and artistic works, no matter how great, that document the ambivalence of female sexuality they are trained to dismiss as "misogynous." In other words, their minds are being programmed to secede from their bodies ... there is a huge gap between feminist rhetoric and women's actual sex lives, where feminism is of little help except with a certain stratum of deferential, malleable, white middle-class men. ~ Camille Paglia

The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the organizational ability of a Prussian field marshal, the insight into human relations of a Viennese psychologist, the discipline of a man who prints the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, the exquisite sense of timing of an Olympic gymnast, and by the way, a natural instinct and flair for exceptional use of language. ~ Leon Uris

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. ~ Socrates

Since man's natural instincts lead him to sin, all men are sinners; and all sinners go to hell. If everyone goes to hell, then you will meet all your friends there. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck. ~ Lajos Kossuth

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school. ~ Katie Leung

A ham is simply any actor who has not been successful in repressing his natural instincts. ~ George Jean Nathan

Brutes by their natural instinct have produced many discoveries, whereas men by discussion and the conclusions of reason have given birth to few or none. ~ Francis Bacon

For if by natural instinct or wisdom we could bring ourselves back to the road and escape from error, we would have no need for Christ. But ~ John Calvin

Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face. ~ Fannie Flagg

[On married love]
This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.
It is a love which is total - that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself. ~ Pope Paul VI

160Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my current condition from any disturbance. ~ Immanuel Kant

I don't have a very good relationship with baking. I do bake sometimes, but my natural instinct is to just do what feels right a lot, and that's what you're not supposed to do in baking. I'm not a good baker. ~ Thu Tran

I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something. ~ Woodrow Wilson

By the law of Christ, every man is bound to love his neighbour as himself; but every servant is a neighbour of every civil lord; therefore every civil lord must love any of his servants as himself; but by natural instinct, every lord abhors slavery; therefore, by the law of charity, he is bound not to impose slavery on any brother in Christ. ~ John Wycliffe

If you say: what is the way to knowing Him? I would say: were a small boy or an impotent person to say to us: what is the way to know the pleasure of sexual intercourse, and to perceive its essential reality? we would say: there are two ways here: one of them is for us to describe it to you, so that you can know it; the other is to wait patiently until you experience the natural instinct of passion in yourself, and then for you to engage in intercourse so that you experience the pleasure of intercourse yourself, and so come to know it. This second way is the authentic way, leading to the reality of knowledge. ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

I don't think [being monogamous] is a natural instinct for human beings, but it doesn't mean I don't believe in monogamy or true love. I believe in finding a soul mate. Monogamy can be hard work for some people. I don't think it applies to everybody, and I don't think a lot of people can do it. ~ Scarlett Johansson

Religion is common to the human race. Stripped of accidental characteristics, and reduced to its essential form, it consists of five notitae, communes, or innate ideas, which spring from the natural instinct.

The common notions are:
(i) There is a God.
(ii) He ought to be worshipped.
(iii) Virtue and piety are essential to worship.
(iv) Man ought to repent of his sins.
(v) There are rewards and punishments in a future
life.

It is unnecessary and unreasonable to admit any articles of religion other than those. The dogmas of the Churches, reputed to embody divine revelations, are the work of priests, who have endeavoured to establish their own influence for their own advantage by shrouding these five ideas in obscurely worded creeds. ~ Herbert Of Cherbury

Because I come from such a close family, my natural instinct is to marry and have kids as soon as possible. ~ Nicole Trunfio

From when I was really young one of the first things I did was to perform and do shows. It was like a natural instinct. ~ Colin Morgan

I go by instinct - i don't worry about experience. ~ Barbra Streisand

...The happy Warrior... is he... who, with a natural instinct to discern what knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; abides by this resolve, and stops not there, but makes his moral being his prime care. ~ William Wordsworth

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
' Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness. ~ Thomas De Quincey

My natural instinct after doing something shameful is not to rush into the street boasting about it but to put on dark glasses and head for the next county, hoping nobody notices I've been in the neighborhood. ~ Russell Baker

For me, that's natural. The instinct to score comes naturally and if you have it, you've got to go to it. ~ Reggie Lewis

One of the things that cause stress and strain in human social life is that it is possible, up to a point, to become aware of rational grounds for a behaviour not prompted by natural instinct. But when such behaviour strains natural instinct too severely nature takes her revenge by producing either listlessness or destructiveness, either of which may cause a structure imposed by reason to break down. ~ Bertrand Russell

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales. ~ Aleister Crowley

[A man] finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law, [where] men... let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species - in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him, and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes. ~ Immanuel Kant

Your natural instinct, from your broadest Nonphysical perspective, is to know your power. Fear is a vibration when you feel powerless. Your natural instinctual Nonphysical vibration is to know your worthiness, know your rightness, know your value. And the feeling of fear is always when you are contradicting that thought. ~ Esther Hicks

Marriage is a tyranny, a mortification of man's natural instincts. Man needs a multiplicity of relationships. ~ Federico Fellini

Actors are trusting souls, and we must go by gut-level instinct, even after our agents and business managers weigh all the odds. ~ Anne Archer

To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing. ~ Jesse Helms

Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it. ~ Laurence Olivier

There are parts of a woman's heart that are reserved for certain types of love. Experiencing the love of a father figure in an appropriate way is essential in paving the way for the love of a man to be experienced in the right way.

The love of a father is vital in ensuring that a woman's heart is kept open in this area. If this area is not kept open, it produces problems later on in a woman's life, for that area is also reserved for the romantic love that comes in the form of a marriage relationship.

This is an extremely sensitive area of the heart for a woman, and has plenty of opportunity to be easily bruised. When that does occur, she will put up a protective barrier to try and avoid any such pain occurring again. If this barrier isn't dismantled fairly soon, a woman's heart becomes accustomed to its protective barrier, and the heart shielded inside gradually becomes hardened. As women, we may be able to function like this for awhile. But there will come a time in your life where God will begin to peel away those hard layers surrounding your heart, and you probably won't like that sensation. But you have to fight your natural instinct to run away.

This is where many Christian women may get stuck. They view every man through the lens of what their father was to them, or what he was not. Their perception of men is shaded, and often damaged, by the very people who should have been modeling the world of adult relationships to their daughters. ~ Corallie Buchanan

We are part of the same society. We are part of the same humanity. When humanity is happy, we will be happy. When humanity is peaceful, our own lives are peaceful. ... We must develop the sense of 'we'. Once you're able to develop that sense of common humanity and the oneness of humanity, then naturally you will want all others to be free from suffering and enjoy happiness. The desire for happiness is a natural instinct shared by everyone. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Each of has a natural instinct to rise like a flame. Lets nurture that instinct ~ Narendra Modi

To horses, everyday is a new day to survive. It's a natural instinct. They don't think of the past or the future, only the present. So in terms of trying to teach your horse or build a special bond, patience is the key to every stall's door. ~ Sheikha Hissa Hamdan Al Maktoum

I force myself to outline, but not too closely, so I guess I plot by the seat of my pants? My natural instinct is to dive right in, but I know I'll get stuck. I like to stick with the architect vs. gardener metaphor. I guess I'm a gardener who plants tomatoes. I have the sticks in the ground and let the vines grow along those parameters. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Repressing is a natural instinct, but it doesn't allow for healing. Coming out of repression can be very similar to reliving the original fear. I'm sure not everyone who needs help gets help they need, and that may not necessarily mean they won't be okay. ~ Gwen Hayes

The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities. ~ Aristotle.

Hear me out," Marin said. "It's smart to want to be safe. It's a natural instinct. If we protect ourselves - our bodies, our minds, our hearts - we can avoid all these messy things. Being embarrassed. Making mistakes. Looking dumb. Getting our hearts broken. But there's a huge price to pay for that safety. And usually that price is being alone or being stuck. Whether that's stuck in a job or a relationship or in a place you don't want to be. Everything has a price. For whatever reason, something in you wants to be safe. Girls in movies are safe. ~ Roni Loren

Though my natural instinct is to wish for a life free from pain, trouble, and adversity, I am learning to welcome anything that makes me conscious of my need for Him. If prayer is birthed out of desperation, then anything that makes me desperate for God is a blessing. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path. ~ Henry Winkler

Human beings want to be free and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, there will come a time when they say 'That's it.' Suddenly they find themselves doing something that they never would have thought they would be doing, simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Because this is the beauty of strangers: we're all just doing our best to help each other out, motivated not by karma but by a natural instinct to help the greater whole. ~ Sloane Crosley

There's just a natural instinct to want to be great, I think. ~ Patrick Wilson

Sexuality is a human instinct as natural as hunger or thirst. ~ Alexandra Kollontai

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun. ~ Don Marquis

No one has any license to brag because he is honest. That should be natural instinct and, besides, if you are not, they put you in jail. Honesty is merely a form of insurance. ~ Charles Comiskey

Love is a natural instinct that grows if it is nurtured. It evolves itself but withers if it is not watered with affection, care, respect and kindness. ~ Balroop Singh

When someone hurts us, our natural instinct is to strike back - but when we do, we not only destroy any possibility of reconciliation, but we also allow anger and hate to control us. ~ Billy Graham

I guess because I'm a liberal I think it's not people's natural instinct to be completely self-interested. ~ Matthew Weiner

Conformity - the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority. ~ Mark Twain

Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil. ~ Pope John Paul II

It is the natural instinct of a child to work from within outwards; "First I think, and then I draw my think." What wasted efforts we make to teach the child to stop thinking, and only to observe! ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy

She likes the bad boys the ones that are bad for her. Maggie is SELF-DESTRUCTIVE. She has the love instinct and the death instinct and they are in an eternal cage match inside her head. This ~ Kate Zambreno

It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation). ~ Steven Pinker

You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelegence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or instinct, or simply because he had been tuitored into it, or by any intermixture of all of these , even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb , sponteneous literal process. ~ Herman Melville

Canada's a huge country, so to be able to unite the country through communication satellite technology or to be able to observe it through remote sensing technology from space is a natural fit for a country like Canada. ~ Marc Garneau

Yet women, whose minds are not enlarged by cultivation, or in whom the natural selfishness of sensibility hasn't been expanded by reflection, are very unfit to manage a family, because they always stretch their power and use tyranny to maintain a superiority that rests on nothing but the arbitrary distinction of fortune. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

There is a real world independent of our senses; the laws of nature were not invented by man, but forced on him by the natural world. They are the expression of a natural world order. ~ Max Planck

Cannabis sativa and its derivatives are strictly prohibited in Turkey, and the natural correlative of this proscription is that alcohol, far from being frowned upon as it is in other Moslem lands, is freely drunk; being a government monopoly it can be bought at any cigarette counter. This fact is no mere detail; it is of primary social importance, since the psychological effects of the two substances are diametrically opposed to each other. Alcohol blurs the personality by loosening inhibitions. The drinker feels, temporarily at least, a sense of participation. Kif abolishes no inhibitions; on the contrary it reinforces them, pushes the individual further back into the recesses of his own isolated personality, pledging him to contemplation and inaction. It is to be expected that there should be a close relationsip between the culture of a given society and the means used by its members to achieve release and euphoria. For Judaism and Christianity the means has always been alcohol; for Islam it has been hashish. The first is dynamic in its effects, the other static. If a nation wishes, however mistakenly, to Westernize itself, first let it give up hashish. The rest will follow, more or less as a manner of course. Conversely, in a Western country, if a whole segment of the population desires, for reasons of protest (as has happened in the United States), to isolate itself in a radical fashion from the society around it, the quickest and surest way is for it to replace alcohol b ~ Paul Bowles

I think for me it was a natural transition to move full time into acting rather than figure skating. ~ Julie Benz

In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While ~ Manly P. Hall

I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have. ~ Frances Mayes

Christ says, Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good ... Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked
the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours. ~ C.S. Lewis

Why do we need to be pardoned? What are we to be pardoned for? For not dying of hunger? For not accepting humbly the historic burden of disdain and abandonment? For having risen up in arms after we found all other paths closed? For not heeding the Chiapas penal code, one of the most absurd and repressive in history? For showing the rest of the country and the whole world that human dignity still exists even among the world's poorest peoples? For having made careful preparations before we began our uprising? For bringing guns to battle instead of bows and arrows? For being Mexicans? For being mainly indigenous? For calling on the Mexican people to fight by whatever means possible for what belongs to them? For fighting for liberty, democracy and justice? For not following the example of previous guerrilla armies? For refusing to surrender? For refusing to sell ourselves out? Who should we ask for pardon, and who can grant it? Those who for many years glutted themselves at a table of plenty while we sat with death so often, we finally stopped fearing it? Those who filled our pockets and our souls with empty promises and words? Or should we ask pardon from the dead, our dead, who died "natural" deaths of "natural causes" like measles, whooping cough, break-bone fever, cholera, typhus, mononucleosis, tetanus, pneumonia, malaria and other lovely gastrointestinal and pulmonary diseases? Our dead, so very dead, so democratically dead from sorrow because no one did anything, because t ~ Subcomandante Marcos

Nobody is fit to rule anybody else. It is not alleged that Mankind is perfect, or that merely through his/her natural goodness (or lack of same) he/she should (or should not) be permitted to rule. Rule as such causes abuse. There are no superpeople nor privileged classes who are above 'imperfect Mankind' and are capable or entitled to rule the rest of us. Submission to slavery means surrender of life. ~ Albert Meltzer

Very often (nearly always, I'm afraid) when I come to church my feelings are uppermost in my mind. This is natural. We are human, we are "selves," and it takes no effort at all to feel. But worship is not feeling. Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship "in spirit and in truth." Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them. Finding myself scattered in all directions and in need of corralling like so many skittish calves, I kneel before the service begins and ask to be delivered from a vague preoccupation with myself and my own concerns and to be turned, during this short hour, to God. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

If you are always waiting to be, do, or have what you want, your energy becomes blocked. Your body may reflect this in excess weight or other physical problems. Express yourself directly. Set clear boundaries with other people and do what you need to do to take good care of yourself. Energy will then move freely through your body and this circulation will dissolve any excess weight. The more you are willing to be yourself, the less you'll need to use food as a substitute nurturer. You will be receiving the natural nurturing of the universe. ~ Shakti Gawain

Judging other people is such a natural and reflex phenomenon that even when somebody advises everybody not to judge anybody, actually he never realised that he has already judged that people judge others. ~ Anuj

I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground. ~ Werner Herzog

A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women's intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn't realize it. I ~ Elena Ferrante

our views of the natural are shaped by our ideas of the supernatural. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Isn't that the secret sauce of seduction? First the snare of mystery, then the distinctly female instinct to rehabilitate. ~ Jessica Knoll

The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done by our brains, and essential both to our cultures and to our very survival, are epiphenomena of the computing power of this machine, not genetically grounded Darwinian entities created specifically by natural selection for their current function. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

... because it is natural to touch more often the parts that hurt. ~ Seneca.

Men have a psychological need to show off their courage and strength. When he sees you talking to another guy, that instinct kicks in and he jumps to protect you and prove he's worthy of your love. ~ Helen Fisher

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner. ~ Italo Calvino

Because, unlike courage and wisdom, which made our state brave and wise by being present in a particular part of it, discipline operates by being diffused throughout the whole of it. It produces a concord between its strongest and weakest and middle elements, whether you define them by the standard of good sense, or of strength, or of numbers or money or the like. And so we are quite justified in regarding discipline as this sort of natural harmony and agreement between higher and lower about which of them is to rule in state and individual. ~ Plato

But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true. ~ Andy Weir

I knew the woodsy fragrance that accompanied Reed was his natural scent. It was one of the many things that made him hard to resist. ~ Cherie Colyer

Don't be concerned if you haven't been aware of these natural laws before. Once you begin to incorporate a philosophy into your life that is in accordance with Universal law, your life will bring you such joy, that you'll laugh in amazement. It will be as if you've spent your life driving a car in reverse and you've sudenly discovered that there are gears to make it go forward - and fast! ~ Chris Prentiss

Mistress Weatherwax, you are a natural disputant." "No I ain't! ~ Terry Pratchett

Life is better when I get lost in natural beauty. ~ Debasish Mridha

I think academics and intellectuals are the natural enemies of imagination and intelligence. ~ Steve Merrick

The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it. ~ David Attenborough

At first of course everybody had been quiet, fearful. The funeral procession snaked its way through the drab, slushy little city in dead silence. The only sound was the slap-slap-slap of thousands of sockless shoes on the silver-wet road that led to the Mazar-e-Shohadda. Young men carried seventeen coffins on their shoulders. Seventeen plus one, that is, for the re-murdered Usman Abdullah, who obviously could not be entered twice in the books. So, seventeen-plus-one tin coffins wove through the streets, winking back at the winter sun. To someone looking down at the city from the ring of high mountains that surrounded it, the procession would have looked like a column of brown ants carrying seventeen-plus-one sugar crystals to their anthill to feed their queen. Perhaps to a student of history and human conflict, in relative terms that's all the little procession amounted to: a column of ants making off with some crumbs that had fallen from the high table. As wars go, this was only a small one. Nobody paid much attention. So it went on and on. So it folded and unfolded over decades, gathering people into its unhinged embrace. Its cruelties became as natural as the changing seasons, each came with its own unique range of scent and blossom, its own cycle of loss and renewal, disruption and normalcy, uprisings and elections.

Of all the sugar crystals carried by the ants that winter morning, the smallest crystal of course went by the name of Miss Jebeen. ~ Arundhati Roy