Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Robert Macfarlane

Quote by Robert Macfarlane

“On almost every front, we have begun a turning away from a felt relationship with the natural world. The blinding of the stars is only one aspect of this retreat from the real. In so many ways, there has been a prising away of life from place, an abstraction of experience into different kinds of touchlessness. We experience, as no historical period has before, disembodiment and dematerialisation. The almost infinite connectivity of the technological world, for all the benefits that it has brought, has exacted a toll in the coin of contact. We have in many ways forgotten what the world feels like. And so new maladies of the soul have emerged, unhappinesses which are complicated products of the distance we have set between ourselves and the world.”

Quote by Robert Macfarlane

Book:The Wild Places
Create image

Work

The Wild Places

This book is a journey through various wild places, highlighting the beauty and importance of unspoiled natural environments. more

Author

Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane is a British writer renowned for his contributions to nature writing. His works delve into the relationship between humans and the natural world, exploring the impact of nature on the human psyche. more

You May Also Like

“Piece of cake," she said. "Your mother's just lonely." I was dumbfounded. Malabar had dinner parties almost every weekend; she had been juggling two men for years. "My mother's not lonely," I said. "You're wrong," said Kyra. "Loneliness is not about how many people you have around. It's about whether or not you feel connected. Whether or not you're able to be yourself." I was at a loss for words. Was Malabar not being herself when she was being Malabar? "You know what I mean," Kyra said, breaking it down for me. "The lonely feeling comes from not being known.”

LonelinessBeing YourselfConnection
Book:Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Create image

“It was the tick marks above my bed, underneath the bunk on top of mine, that got me thinking about when I'd last extended my hand to anyone. Or anyone extended their hand to me. Someone who lived in the dorm before me had recorded their days at university like a prison sentence, carving into the wooden slats under Jarred's bed, and, one night a week ago, reaching up to run a finger over the tallies, I touched the gnawing in me. I realized it had worked its way around inside, gouging, for a while. It must be a hole I've carried since the start of freshman year. (Though sometimes I wonder if it carried over from years before that.) Simple tally marks etched with a pocketknife woke me to my hollowness.”

LonelinessProfound Thought
Book:Love from A to Z
Create image

“He threw Scholscher a challenging glance. The major was thinking of the motives that could drive a man like Haas to live alone for twenty-five years among the elephants of Lake Chad. It was again that spark of misanthropy which most people carry in them, a presentiment of some different and better company than their own kind, a spark that sometimes blazes up and takes astonishing, unpredictable and explosive forms. He thought also of the old Chinese who never move without their pet grasshoppers, of the Tunisians who take their caged birds to the cafe with them, and of Colonel Babcock who spent hours with his eyes fixed on a jumping bean, which kept him company. He was slightly astonished to hear that Haas believed in God — there seemed to be a contradiction there; it’s true, he thought, taking a pull at his pipe, that God hasn’t got a cold muzzle a man can touch when he feels lonely, that one can’t stroke Him behind the ears, that He doesn’t wag His tail at the sight of you every morning, and that you cannot catch sight of Him trotting over the hills with His ears flapping and His trunk in the air. One can’t even hold Him in one’s hand like a nice warm pipe, and since a spell on earth after all lasts fifty or sixty years, it’s perfectly understandable that people should end by buying themselves a pipe or a jumping bean.”

GodLonelinessLonerNature HealsNeed For LoveMisantropyAnimals HumansNeed For Attention
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“No one knew the desert better than Scholscher, who had spent so many nights alone there on the starlit dunes, and no one understood better than he did that need for protection which sometimes grips men’s hearts and drives them to give a dog the affection they dream so desperately of receiving themselves. And certainly this deep feeling of helplessness had never been more agonizing than now.”

LonelinessAffectionDog LoversAll You Need Is LoveNeed For Love
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image