Jonathan

“I remember a summer night when such a thought came to me strongly. It was a clear night without a moon. With a friend, I went out on a flat headland that is almost a tiny island, being all but surrounded by the waters of the bay. There the horizons are remote and distant rims on the edge of space. We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across on the clear air. A few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of other human life; my companion and I were alone with the stars. I have never seen them more beautiful: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. Once or twice a meteor burned its way into the earth's atmosphere.

It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night perhaps they will never see it.

An experience like that, when one's thoughts are released to roam through the lonely spaces of the universe, can be shared with a child even if you don't know the name of a single star. You can still drink in the beauty, and think and wonder at the meaning of what you see.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“There was no conversation that wasn't about the war. People talked only of themselves, their jobs, their bombs, their version of Don's new ‘we'. She tried to remember what they had talked about before the war. She couldn't. All those good evenings belonged now to the sociologists, the scholars of the future browsing among the remains of the doomed thirties.”
― Mollie Panter-Downes, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

“Giant (and colossal) squid are unique in being massive animals that need to see massive predators, and their singular need has led to a singular Umwelt. With the largest and most sensitive eyes that exist, they scan one of the darkest environments on Earth for the faint sparkling outlines of charging whales.”
― Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

“Although unarmed, they stood steadfast, confident that with their bodies alone they could block soldiers and ward off tanks. Packed together, they gave off a blast of heat, as though every one of them was a blazing torch.

This was a key moment in my life. I had always assumed that light carries farther than human voices and voices carry farther than body heat. But that night I realized it is not so, for when the people stand as one, their voices carry farther than light and their heat is carried farther still. That, I discovered, is what "the people" means.”
― Yu Hua, China in Ten Words