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Nature (n.) seduces ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠toward obedience: the fierce light mellowed tender as a lover's eyes, the sky grew bland as a pardoner's face.

Nature (n.) as ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠the eighteenth century's Idea has no material being beyond acts of writing and speech, yet it is real, since each person takes it as something Other than his own act.

Nature (n.) as ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠vegetation has crawled for miles towards the cities and waits, and once the city is dead it will climb the stones, grip them and burst them with its long black pincers.

Nature (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠not twenty miles outside the city but infiltrated everywhere — in their houses, their offices, in themselves; they breathe it and don't see it.

Nature (n.) was ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠good in the eyes of everyone in 1789, so when Sade argued that murder merely imitates Nature his system swerved: the most heinous crimes became good and the finest virtues wicked.