Summer Meyers

“Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child - why can I not put my head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and self-controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang short, boy's trouser - it is such a little time ago, why is it over?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“How pointless all human thoughts, words and deeds must be, if things like this are possible! Everything must have been fraudulent and pointless if thousands of years of civilization weren’t even able to prevent this river of blood, couldn’t stop these torture chambers existing in their hundreds of thousands. Only a military hospital can really show you what war is.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Beauty is not superficial, or "mere", or a luxury. Beauty is the birthright of living beings. Imagine the unrelieved drudgery of a life without beauty. Subtract beauty, then consider all the grim imperatives and demands of finding food and shelter, competing, procreating; who would want to bother? Emerson wrote, "He thought it happier to be dead / To die for beauty, than live for bread." Beauty is the thing that makes life worth the time it takes. Beauty makes life worth the effort, the risks and the frights and the struggles that being alive requires. Beauty is the reward the frights and the struggles that being alive requires. Beauty is the reward our brains give us for making the effort to stay in the world. Beauty is what eases that effort into joy. Beauty makes our smiles, and gets us past the tears. I think it's that profound, that fundamental. I think that is what all beauties have in common, from the sight of a macaw and the song of a thrush to the deliciousness of good food, the touch of a loved one, or the fidgets of someone small who needs their diaper changed. So maybe we could write, "She found it happier to be here / To walk in beauty, than shrink in fear." Beauty makes us love what it takes to live.”
― Carl Safina, Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn Who They Are

“Beings who've succeeded on earth for millennia don't seek, and should not require, our approval. They belong here as do we. We do ourselves no favors by asking whether their existence is worth our while. We are hardly in a position to judge, hurtling and lurching along as we are with no goal, no plan except: bigger, faster, more.”
― Carl Safina, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace