Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.
Interpretation
Nature influences human emotions, often invoking feelings of fear or shame in response to wrongdoing.
This quote by Tertullian suggests that nature has a profound ability to reflect human actions and moral failures. It implies that when individuals act immorally or engage in wrongdoing, nature serves as a mirror, amplifying the negative consequences of their actions through psychological responses such as fear or shame, which can lead to self-reflection and change.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about environmental ethics during a seminar.
Whatever is born is the work of God. So whatever is plastered on, is the devil's work.... How unworthy of the Christian name it is to wear a fictitious face - you on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined! You, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful, are lying in appearance.
Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all.
For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because [God] has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to manβs wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.
The first reaction to truth is hatred.
We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, "We worship God through Christ!" Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped.
Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things.
Nature is often overlooked as a healing balm for the emotional hardships in a child's life. You'll likely never see a slick commercial for nature therapy, as you do for the latest antidepressant pharmaceuticals. But parents, educators, and health workers need to know what a useful antidote to emotional and physical stress nature can be. Especially now.
The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,_x000D_ _x000D_ Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught_x000D_ _x000D_ In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront_x000D_ _x000D_ Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,_x000D_ Of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains._x000D_ I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,_x000D_ Her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land for me!
Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets?
There is another sort of day which needs celebrating in song -- the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. On that day no wind blows either in the hills or in the mind.
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,_x000D_ Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green._x000D_ Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing_x000D_ With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.
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