A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty.
 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908). copy citation

add
Author G. K. Chesterton
Source Orthodoxy
Topic cruelty innocence
Date 1908
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html

Context

“But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull's blood, as did Julian the Apostate. The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy.” source