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“Edwin’s gaze drifted away from the man’s face, to the mild decrepitude of the September garden. The salvias were bare now, for the most part, brown stalks and dried leaves, a few last blooms wisping blue and violet in the failing light. He was struck by an understanding of what his life could be from this moment: he could live here quietly, and care for the garden, and that might eventually be enough.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“The choir are screaming now, fugue-permutations veering and careening to the outer limits of the field where any ratio of intervals or pitches might hold sway: tonics swapping with subdominants within the space of single notes that seem to play out in three octaves all at once, false entries, inversions, retrogrades and diminutions running riot through all keys -- until, suddenly, these fall away, like clouds”
― Tom McCarthy, The Making of Incarnation

“The logical conclusion of the development of wildlife corridors and protected areas -- even mobile ones -- is that there are places which must be left to non-humans, even in a more-than-human world.
This is not a new suggestion. It goes back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century in Western culture, to the founding of National Parks in Europe and America, and it is intrinsic to non-Western conceptions of our place among the species of the planet. But there is growing awareness that it is now more urgent and must be much more extensive than a few scattered parks and sanctuaries. Indeed, there is a strong scientific and moral case that it should comprise at least half the entire Earth.”
― James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

“Indeed, even if you make God your goal, all the works you perform for his sake will be dead, and you will only spoil those works which are genuinely good. Not only will you spoil your good works, but you will also commit sins, for you will be behaving like a gardener who is supposed to plant a garden but who pulls out all the trees instead and then demands his wages. That is how you will spoil your good works. And so, if you wish to live and wish your works to live too, then you must be dead to all things and be reduced to nothing. It is a property of creatures to make one thing from another, but it is a property of God to make something from nothing. And so if God is to make something of you or in you, then you must first yourself become nothingness. Enter your own inner ground therefore and act from there, and all your works shall be living works. That is why ' the wise man' says that 'the just person lives in eternity' since it is because they are just that such a person acts, and all their works are living works.”
― Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings