Temple is an intensely moral creature. She has a passionate sense of right and wrong, for example, in regard to the treatment of animals; and law, fo… - Oliver Sacks

Temple, who was driving, suddenly faltered and wept. “I’ve read that libraries are where immortality lies. . . . I don’t want my thoughts to die with me. . . . I want to have done something. . . . I’m not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution—know that my life has meaning. Right now, I’m talking about things at the very core of my existence.” I was stunned. As I stepped out of the car to say goodbye, I said, “I’m going to hug you. I hope you don’t mind.” I hugged her—and (I think) she hugged me back.

The beauty of the forest is extraordinary — but “beauty” is too simple a word, for being here is not just an aesthetic experience, but one steeped with mystery, with awe. ... [The forest] has to do with the ancient, the aboriginal, the beginning of all things. The primeval, the sublime, are much better words here — for they indicate realms remote from the moral or the human, realms which force us to gaze into immense vistas of space and time, where the beginnings and originations of all things lie hidden. Now, as I wandered in the cycad forest on Rota, it seemed as if my senses were actually enlarging, as if a new sense, a time sense, was opening within me, something which might allow me to appreciate millennia or aeons as directly as I had experienced seconds or minutes. ... Standing here in the jungle, I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth.

On one occasion—it was an oppressive Saturday in the tense summer of 1939—I decided to ride my tricycle up and down Exeter Road near the house, but there was a sudden downpour and I got completely soaked. [Aunt] Annie wagged a finger at me, and shook her heavy head: “Riding on shabbas? You can't get away with it,” she said. “He sees everything, He is watching all the time!” I disliked Saturdays from this time on, disliked God, too (or at least the vindictive, punitive God that Annie's warning had evoked) and developed an uncomfortable, anxious, watched feeling about Saturdays (which persists, a little, to this day).