"My Six Conversions, § II : When the World Turned Back" in The Wells and the Shallows (1935)
Context: The Church never said that wrongs could not or should not be righted; or that commonwealths could not or should not be made happier; or that it was not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless humanity; instead of being as it was a mood of man, and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things.
“It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.”
Variant: It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.
Source: Peeps
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Scott Westerfeld 147
American science fiction writer 1963Related quotes
“We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty.”
"Helen's Exile" (1948)
Context: We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.
“Do it or don't. It's amazing how many things in life are that easy.”
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap between Science and the Humanities (Harmony, 2003), p. 82
“It’s amazing how lovely common things become, if one only knows how to look at them.”
Source: Marjorie's Three Gifts
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)
Referring to chimpanzees, reported in Jane Goodall: Primatologist and Animal Activist (2009) by Connie Jankowski, p. 13