A Quote by Harriet Martineau

The sick-room becomes the scene of intense convictions; and among these, none, it seems to me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the permanent nature of good, and the transient nature of evil.
For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil men’s control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evil’s stranglehold will be easily broken.
If a man is able to submit himself to nature, then nature will react to his needs. Almighty nature is all powerful and all loving, for the laws of nature are for the creation and evolution of all beings and creatures throughout the cosmos. There is no greater kindness than the kindness of nature.
Having been brought up among the biologists and having followed various debates about ways to improve the human template and other debates about the true nature of our nature, I began seriously to wonder: What if? We hold in our hands a tool that is more powerful - for good or ill - than any we have wielded before.
After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. ...a canon of nature's laws, strategies, and principles... Nature runs on sunlight. Nature uses only the energy it needs. Nature fits form to function. Nature recycles everything. Nature rewards cooperation. Nature banks on diversity. Nature demands local expertise. Nature curbs excesses from within. Nature taps the power of limits.
Given is the word. Given publicly, on the first Good Friday, on a hill, in the sight of all, was the visible demonstration of the only permanent way to overcome evil. Human nature demands something more enduring than the unquiet equilibrium of rival powers.
Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self.
Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man.
Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal.
An organization belongs on a sick list when promotion becomes more important to its people than accomplishment of their job they are in. It is sick when it is more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with taking risks, with counteracting the weaknesses of its members than with building on their strength. But it is sick also when "good human relations" become more important than performance and achievement.
To do evil for good is human corruption; to do good for good is civil retribution; but to do good for evil is Christian perfection. Though this be not the grace of nature, it is the nature of grace.
To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life.
The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.
What evil is there in seeing a man possess a woman? Why, the beasts would be more free than we! It seems to me that that which is given us by nature for our own preservation ought to be worn round the neck as a pendant and in the hat for a medal.
Evil is powerful, but good is more powerful. In fact, evil is so powerful that only good has the power to overcome evil. Darkness can be driven away only by light.
To the mind which looks not to general results in the economy of Nature, the earth may seem to present a scene of perpetual warfare, and incessant carnage: but the more enlarged view, while it regards individuals in their conjoint relations to the general benefit of their own species, and that of other species with which they are associated in the great family of Nature, resolves each apparent case of individual evil, into an example of subserviency to universal good.
Among the older records, we find chapter after chapter of which we can read the characters, and make out their meaning: and as we approach the period of man's creation, our book becomes more clear, and nature seems to speak to us in language so like our own, that we easily comprehend it. But just as we begin to enter on the history of physical changes going on before our eyes, and in which we ourselves bear a part, our chronicle seems to fail us-a leaf has been torn out from nature's record, and the succession of events is almost hidden from our eyes.
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