If you wanted something ennobling to think about, it seems you’d want to think about the human race. In fact, Robinson Jeffers believed you would do better to think about nature:
Man is a part of nature, but a nearly infinitesimal part; the human race will cease after a while and leave no trace, but the great splendors of nature will go on. Meanwhile most of our time and energy are necessarily spent on human affairs; that can’t be prevented, though I think it should be minimized; but for philosophy, which is an endless research of truth, and for contemplation, which can be a sort of worship, I would suggest that the immense beauty of the earth and the outer universe, the divine “nature of things,” is a more rewarding object. Certainly it is more ennobling. It is a source of strength; the other of distraction.
(Quoted from page 254 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
For a brief biography of Robinson Jeffers, click here. For images of or relating to Robinson Jeffers, click here.
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