#ip

Nature is infinitely rich and diverse in her ways. She can be seen to break her most unchanging laws. She has made self-interest the motive of all human action, but in the great host of men she produces ones who are strangely constituted, in whom selfishness is scarcely perceptible because they do not place their affections in themselves. Some are passionate about the sciences, others about the public good. They are as attached to the discoveries of others as if they themselves had made them, or to the institutions of public welfare and the state as if they derived benefit from them. This habit of not thinking of themselves influences the whole course of their lives. They don't know how to use other men for their profit. Fortune offers them opportunities which they do not think of taking up. In nearly all men the self is almost never inactive. You will detect their self-interest in nearly all the advice they give you, in the services they do for you, in the contacts they make, in the friendships they form. They are deeply attached to the things which affect their interests however remotely, and are indifferent to all others. When they encounter a man who is indifferent to personal interest they cannot understand him. They suspect him of hidden motives, of affectation, or of insanity. They cast him from their bosom, revile him. ↗

— Jan Potocki

#self-interest #selfishness #selflessness #friendship

But my dear young lady," he said offering a cigarette, "who ever said I have a poor opinion of women? On the contrary, I have a very high opinion of women, and the more I see of them the more I like them. ↗

— Frank O'Connor

#relationship

Me arrodillé ante un póster de Marilyn Monroe y le pedí su intervención. Le rogué que borrara mi nombre de su agenda y de su mente desquiciada. ↗

— Raúl Rodríguez Cetina

#relationship

I wondered then if there could ever be trust in a relationship based from the outset upon deceiving other people. ↗

— Catherine Sanderson

#relationship

Discover the fulfillment of intimate relationships with flesh-and-blood neighbors and teammates in concrete place and time, and we escape the pressure of mainstream media to channel intimacy only as virtual embrace. ↗

— Jose Panate-Aceves and John Hayes

#neighbors #relationships #relationship

That's where your definition of attachment comes in. I'm in a monogamous relationship with two people. ↗

— Robert Downs

#relationships #relationship

You - it's your nature - you are an incorrigible madcap! You bewitch a poor wretch until he doesn't know his head from his heels - puts his feet into his hat and covers his scalp with his boots! You are a will-o'-the-wisp who lures a poor fellow on through woods, bogs and briars, until you land him in the quicksands! You whirl him around and around until he grows dizzy and delirious, and talks at random, and then you'd have him called out, you blood-thirsty little vixen! I tell you, Cousin Cap, if I were to take up all the quarrels your hoydenism might lead me into, I should have nothing else to do! ↗

— E.D.E.N. Southworth

#funny #humor #humour #nature

[My father] had a name for the bottom of the sky--'the hem of heaven. ↗

— Nancy Horan

#horizon #nature #love

Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#future #leviathan #man #nature #science-fiction

There is always risk in relationships, but bottom line? The world has no meaning apart from relationships. Some are just messier than others, some are seasonal, others are difficult, and a few are easy, but every one of them is important. ↗

— Wm. Paul Young

#relationship