“People think they can tame the earth. How absurd! The vanity of human wishes is endless. It is more fun to dance with life.” PeopleThinkingHumansEarthHumanityFunWishBuddhismEndlessAbsurdVanity Author:Frederick Lenz
“When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, exploring and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called “licking the earth.” WorldLooksSelfSometimesSeemsEarthPleasureKnownFantasyExerciseOffersPureFairsVariousStrikesSignificantAbsurdInstanceVanitySatanExploringUp And DownGratificationSeductiveSeducingRetrospectGuiseLickingPascalVanity FairSelf Gratification Author:Malcolm Muggeridge
“We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.” IfsMenShouldYearsFirstsHumansLongDifferentProblemRealityEarthUniverseViewsPlansMinutesPerspectiveDestructionGreedPoint Of ViewVanityInclinationTelescopesBiasedDifferent PerspectiveVistasHuman Problems Author:Rachel Carson
“The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself - not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.” IfsMenHumansReasonEarthAnimalSupportPlanetsSucceedVanityFollyDestroyingMechanismPersistOrganismsIngeniousRemakesSustenanceHuman Animal Author:Edward Abbey