Nature is pitiless; she never withholds her flowers, her melodies, her perfumes, her sunbeams, from human abominations. She overwhelms man by the contrast between divine beauty and social ugliness; she spares him nothing, neither the wing of butterfly, nor song of bird; on the verge of murder, in the act of vengeance or barbarity, she brings him face to face with those holy things; nowhere can he escape the eternal reproach of universal benevolence and the implacable serenity of the sky. Human law in all its hideous deformity must stand forth naked in the presence of the eternal radiance. Man breaks and crushes, lays waste, destroys; but the summer, the lily, and the star remain ever the same...-- from the closing chapter of his book "Ninety-three."
In the presence of a world all flowery and fragrant, tender and charming, the glorious sky bathed both the Tourgue and the guillotine with the light of dawn, as though it said to man: "Behold my work, and yours."
05 April 2020
A quote from Victor Hugo
Found this yesterday while sorting memorabilia, in an old notebook that had entries from the Vietnam War period.
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Victor Hugo, you mean, not Victor Huge
ReplyDeleteI hear he's tres grande in France.
DeleteSP. Hugo in the headline
ReplyDeleteVictor Huge? I love his novel, "The Big Book of Hunchbacks".
ReplyDeleteLOL. Fixed, but I almost left it intact just so others could enjoy your comment.
DeleteHe's one of the few prominents - including Tex Avery & Johnny Cash - i"m happy to share my birthdate with and proud to collectively celebrate our birthday.
ReplyDelete🤡🎉
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“Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,”
ReplyDeleteRob Watson
Counterpoint:
ReplyDelete"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life