We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology, their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life.
Mode
With me, even if my life depended on it, I wouldn’t be able to cry. Not with somebody there. Because even if I’m talking about bad and upsetting things, if there is somebody else in the room, I am trying to entertain them. If there is somebody there, I am in performance mode. I can only cry if I am on my own.
Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland.
Being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with; its possibility is a proof for the latter.
‘Discipleship’ as a term has lost its content, and this is one reason why it has been moved aside. I’ve tried to redeem the idea of discipleship, and I think it can be done; you have to get it out of the contemporary mode.
The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism.
Perceptual reality is different for different species. In certain species it is a mode of observation, so what we call scientific fact is actually not ultimate truth, it is perceptual experience, and it’s a mode of observation.
My idea here is that, inasmuch as certain cognitive tasks and principles are tied to nature’s laws, these tasks and principles are indifferent to language, culture, gender, or the particular mode of information that is provided.