civilization is a transient sickness. Robinson Jeffers More Quotes by Robinson Jeffers More Quotes From Robinson Jeffers Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from. Robinson Jeffers rocks ocean views Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it. Robinson Jeffers solitude taken imagination Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us. Robinson Jeffers cruelty human-nature humans I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy... parts of one organic whole.... (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. Robinson Jeffers stars beautiful love Know that however ugly the parts appear Robinson Jeffers divine-beauty beautiful men It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is. Robinson Jeffers earth littles beautiful Long live freedom and damn the ideologies. Robinson Jeffers live-free damn long A little too abstract, a little too wise, It is time for us to kiss the earth again, It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies, Let the rich life run to the roots again. Robinson Jeffers wise rain running Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. Robinson Jeffers appeals instinct poetry The tides are in our veins. Robinson Jeffers veins tides water Still the mind smiles at its own rebellions. Robinson Jeffers rebellion stills mind Happy people die whole, they are all dissolved in a moment, they have had what they wanted. Robinson Jeffers moments happiness people The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean. Robinson Jeffers ocean stars children The world's in a bad way, my man, And bound to be worse before it mends; Better lie up in the mountain here Four or five centuries, While the stars go over the lonely ocean. Robinson Jeffers stars lonely lying That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Robinson Jeffers men america years I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now Run with you in the evenings along the shore, Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment, You see me there. Robinson Jeffers dream running littles O that our souls could scale a height like this, A mighty mountain swept o'er by the bleak Keen winds of heaven; and, standing on that peak Above the blinding clouds of prejudice, Would we could see all truly as it is; The calm eternal truth would keep us meek. Robinson Jeffers clouds wind heaven ...Science and mathematics Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it, They never touch it: consider what an explosion Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world If any mind for a moment touch truth. Robinson Jeffers truth running reality The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Robinson Jeffers divine-beauty wholeness divine It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions - the world of the spirits. Robinson Jeffers imagination self peace