Quotes About Harshness

I'm always aware that under the spritely twitter of birds, bones are being crunched and ribbons of flesh are being stripped away, all of it the work of bright-eyed creatures without feeling or conscience. I don't look to nature for comfort or serenity.

It was beautiful, this place, and it was savage. It swallowed you and made you a part of itself, or if you proved too inassimilable, it spit you out like the pit of a plum.

That's what Alice liked about the desert, its constant relentless conflict with itself. The desert was unexpectedly beautiful and horrible at once.

didn't want this. They didn't want to populate this horrible land that was snow and rocks and skinny wolves. They spoke to their children through gritted teeth. That's where the Québec accent came from. The nation crawled out from between their legs.

Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence.

discipline in words and speech. Do not speak any word (from your side) that would create turbulence and turmoil in the minds of others. Even if you don't speak, some people get turbulent. That you are not responsible for, but from your side, do not speak. This is an oath you will take to begin with, for the next five days. Do not speak any harsh word. Don't let any harsh word come out of your mouth to anyone. Do not hurt with your words, for the Divine dwells in every heart.

Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.

I have to tell you the truth. But you are too ugly for it.

Nature was not gentle or nice. There was no such thing as mercy in the natural world. You don't get any points for trying. You either survive or you don't.

The romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die.

Harshness is conquered by gentleness, hatred by love, lethargy by zeal and darkness by light.

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.

When even camels can't manage a desert, you know you've found a tough part of the world.

You know, sometimes the world seems like a pretty mean place.' 'That's why animals are so soft and huggy.

Every man and woman present thought how the neatly drawn lines and words upon the maps were in truth ice-covered pools and rivers, silent woods, frozen ditches and high, bare hills and every one of them thought how many sheep and cattle and wild creatures died in this season.

So Coira grew now, with two distinct sides. The silent, loveless, light side, where everything was clear and plain and harsh. And the shadow side, softer and secretive, kind in its own way, philosophical, and convinced of spirit.

The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. The have also created a romanticism of contempt.

Kids can be harsh, especially when they get jealous.

It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate. The chief charm of New England was harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility - a cold that froze the blood, and a heat that boiled it - so that the pleasure of hating - one's self if no better victim offered - was not

This is kind of a dual existence where you are harsh but at the same time emotional. You are there because you have experienced trauma.

I'm harsh on myself. But let's be honest: I'm not as harsh as the online one-star critic who says, 'This book is boring and stupid and smells like poo.'

Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.

Yonkers made me strong and made me believe in myself, because so many people would doubt you and not believe. There are people that would believe in you, but the environment was so harsh, nobody wanted you to get out, you know?