The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
Baruch SpinozaRead
.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.
Interpretation
We are integral to the natural world, adhering to its inherent order.
This quote by Baruch Spinoza emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity and nature. It suggests that just as nature follows a specific order and structure, so too are we, as human beings, an essential part of that system, highlighting our responsibility to respect and cherish the natural world.
In practice
Use this quote in an environmental awareness campaign to emphasize our role in nature.
The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion.
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. [They are the two sides of a coin, so learning how to manage fear through learning, understanding, rationality, controlled imagination, preparation, mental focus (including distraction) and a gratitude attitude is very helpful.]
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.
Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.
The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.
In Holland and Belgium, and afterwards in England, my happiest moments were in the country. I've always had a passion for the outdoors, for trees, for birds and flowers.
Just as we have the power to harm the ocean, we have the power to put in place policies and modify our own behavior in ways that would be an insurance policy for the future of the sea, for the creatures there, and for us, protecting special critical areas in the ocean.
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