Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.
Interpretation
Nature influences human emotions, often invoking feelings of fear or shame in response to wrongdoing.
This quote by Tertullian suggests that nature has a profound ability to reflect human actions and moral failures. It implies that when individuals act immorally or engage in wrongdoing, nature serves as a mirror, amplifying the negative consequences of their actions through psychological responses such as fear or shame, which can lead to self-reflection and change.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about environmental ethics during a seminar.
Whatever is born is the work of God. So whatever is plastered on, is the devil's work.... How unworthy of the Christian name it is to wear a fictitious face - you on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined! You, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful, are lying in appearance.
Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all.
For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because [God] has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to man’s wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.
The first reaction to truth is hatred.
We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, "We worship God through Christ!" Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped.
Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things.
There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it.
Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important.
Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.
All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander.
As one looks across the barren stretches of the pack, it is sometimes difficult to realise what teeming life exists immediately beneath its surface.
We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.
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