We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeRead
Why is it that so many of us persist in thinking that autumn is a sad season? Nature has merely fallen asleep, and her dreams must be beautiful if we are to judge by her countenance.
Interpretation
Autumn is often viewed as a sad time, but it is simply a period of rest for nature, indicating beauty and potential.
In this quote, Samuel Taylor Coleridge challenges the common perception of autumn as a melancholic season. He asserts that rather than being sad, autumn represents a time when nature prepares for rest, suggesting that there is beauty and tranquility in this transition. By interpreting nature's dormancy as beautiful dreams, Coleridge invites us to view changes in life and seasons from a more positive perspective.
In practice
In a speech about embracing change, one might refer to this quote to illustrate the beauty of transformation.
We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Often do the spirits stride on before the event; and in today already walks tomorrow.
Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not embracing the whole truth.
To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.
We torture and kill two billion sentient living beings every week. 10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one, and we are now facing the sixth mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this, a biologist would consider them a virus.
...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom.
When you drink in nature through your senses, you deepen your awareness of the great silent intelligence flowing through all things. You nourish your mind, body, and spirit as you connect to the divine love of Being.
I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
I like to think_x000D_ (it has to be!)_x000D_ of a cybernetic ecology_x000D_ where we are free of our labors_x000D_ and joined back to nature,_x000D_ returned to our mammal_x000D_ brothers and sisters,_x000D_ and all watched over_x000D_ by machines of loving grace.
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