Why do we as a people choose to live in beautiful and risky places? Beautiful places are relatively dangerous; the forces that made them beautiful are the same forces that will ultimately destroy them.
Interpretation
We are drawn to beautiful yet perilous locations, which are shaped by the same natural forces that can lead to their destruction.
This quote by Simon Winchester reflects on the paradox of human attraction to stunning landscapes that often come with inherent risks. It suggests that while beauty captivates us, it is also a reminder of nature's unpredictable power, as the geological forces that create breathtaking environments can also lead to their demise. This duality of attraction and danger highlights our complex relationship with the natural world.
In practice
During a speech on environmental conservation, this quote could be used to emphasize the need to protect our beautiful yet vulnerable natural landscapes.
Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent. Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed cannot be regarded as evil.
The most difficult task for anyone wandering through a foreign land with the hope of gaining some insight into it is the profound need to come to terms with the lives and thoughts of strangers.
A golf course should aspire to generate as much energy as it consumes - golf should be leading the way toward energy net zero.
It helps to think of soil as a living organism covered with skin like a human. We can live with a certain percentage of our skin damaged, but if too high a percentage is damaged, we die. So, too, does soil and thus most life
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.
I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)
The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
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