Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
Rene DubosRead
The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of balancing human development with the preservation of natural environments.
Rene Dubos highlights that the relationship between humanity and the Earth is not just about taming nature for our needs but also about safeguarding natural spaces that allow us to connect with the deeper mysteries of existence. This connection enriches our lives and helps us recognize the cosmic forces that have influenced our development as a species.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about environmental conservation.
Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.
Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.
All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit - the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine.
Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.
We need an extreme movement because what is happening to animals is so extreme. Some misinformed people claim that animal rights activists are terrorists, but these people are simply ignorant of who the real terrorists are - the companies and industries that torture literally billions of animals each year.
I've always admired gardens. My father was a great nature lover and would always take me for walks. We lived not too far away from huge rhododendron estates and azalea estates, and when they're in bloom in England, they're just riotous.
Humans merely share the Earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.
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