From our earliest hour we have been taught that the thought of the heart, the shaping of the rain-cloud, the amount of wool that grows on a sheep's back, the length of a drought, and the growing of the corn, depend on nothing that moves immutable, at the heart of all things but on the changeable will of a changeable being, whom our prayers can alter. To us, from the beginning, Nature has been but a poor plastic thing, to be toyed with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not to go to church or not to say his prayers right or not to travel on a Sunday or not. Was it possible for us in an instant to see Nature as she is --the flowing vestment of an unchanging reality
More Quotes from Olive Schreiner:
No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.Olive Schreiner
Of all cursed places under the sun, where the hungriest soul can hardly pick up a few grains of knowledge, a girls boarding-school is the worst. They are called finishing schools, and the name tells accurately what they are. They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate. They are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, ''Into how little space a human being can be crushed'' I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move there -- wide room. A woman who has been for many years at one of those places carries the mark of the beast on her till she dies.
Olive Schreiner
Finishing schools are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, Into how little space a human being can be crushed I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move . .
Olive Schreiner
Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it.
Olive Schreiner
My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those that are sad.
Olive Schreiner
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Based on Topics: Mind Quotes, Nature Quotes, Prayers Quotes, Thought & Thinking QuotesBased on Keywords: changeable, deity, sheeps, toyed, vestment
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