The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man.
--
New York Times review of Mr. Carman's Prose; A Volume Of Little Essays By The Canadian Poet. (1903).Bliss Carman
In nature, it is divinity, rather than history, which Thomas responds to most. ... Thomas finds the God of nature elusive, but when He reveals Himself, he does so through the natural world. God’s reflection, His shadow, and His echo exist in the Welsh hills. His influence there is both a presence and an absence (and, at times, an absence that is like a presence).
R. S. Thomas
To speak of love is not "preaching," for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
Erich Fromm
When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan Behan
The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.
Henry Steele Commager
Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.
Anthony Trollope
Carman, Bliss
Carmichael, Hoagy
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