. . . it occurred to me that relativity and quantum theory might imply the spontaneous creation of universes from nothing. If so, matter and energy would not be fundamental but manifestations of underlying laws. Ultimate reality would be the laws themselves–the mind of . . . God. – Edward P. Tryon.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. - John Donne.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. – Sir Isaac Newton.
Man: Half dust, half deity. — Lord Byron.
The ways of God in nature, as in providence, are not our ways; nor are the models that we frame in any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus. –Joseph Glanvill.
What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice. --Demosthenes.
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter. – J.R.R.Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.
Life is the soul's nursery–Its training place for the destinies of eternity. – Thackeray.
. . . for until that God who rules all the region of the sky. . . has freed you from the fetters of your body, you cannot gain admission here. Men were created with the understanding that they were to look after that sphere called Earth, which you see in the middle of the temple. Minds have been given to them out of the eternal fires you call fixed stars and planets, those spherical solids which, quickened with divine minds, journey through their circuits and orbits with amazing speed.... – Cicero, Scipios Dream. For behold, the kingdom of heaven is within you. – Luke 17.21
We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power that Saturn has over us or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time...
The gates of hell are open, night and day;
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
Number is the Word but is not utterance; it is wave and light, though no one sees it; it is rhythm and music, though no one hears it. Its variations are limitless and yet it is immutable. Each form of life is a particular reverberation of Number. – Maurice Druon, the Memoirs of Zeus.
. . . the original propulsion of inner characteristics outward into the formation of the ego could be compared with the birth of innumerable stars--an event of immeasurable consequences that originated on a subjective level and within inner reality... – Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks.
Though the mills of the God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small; though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. -- Freidrich Von Logan, Retribution.
The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and perturbations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future. –Seneca.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental mental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. – Albert Einstein, The World As I See It.
I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal. –
"Science–great, mighty, and in the end unerring," replied my uncle, dogmatically, "science has fallen into many errors–errors which have been fortunate and useful, rather than otherwise, for they have been the steppingstones to truth." Jules Verne – A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Judgment: "The old church bell rang out the
hour with a mournful sound, as if
it had grown sad from so much
communing with the dead and
unheeded warning to the living;
the fallen leaves rustled; the
grass stirred upon the graves;
all else was still and sleeping."
Charles Dickens—The Old
Curiosity Shop.
To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. – William Blake
Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
"At these times," said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, "I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."
"You mean . . . that stuff's your thoughts?" Harry said, staring at the swirling white substance in the basin.
"Certainly," said Dumbledore. . . . – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright;
And round beneath it Time in hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved. – H. Vaughan.
The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop. – Edwin Conklin.
Hell is but the collected ruins of the moral world, and sin is the principle that has made them.– Marlowe.
"But aren't you going to run and help her?" Alice asked...
"No use, no use!" said the King.
"She runs so fearfully quick, you might as well try to catch a Bandersnatch!"
Lewis Carroll.
Truth is beautiful and divine no matter how humble its origin.—Michael Pupin
Metaphysician: A man who goes into a black cellar at midnight without a light looking for a black cat that is not there. – ascribed to Baron Bowen.
Of light appears, and from the walls of
Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of Night
A glimmering dawn. – John Scotus Erigena.
There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light. – N.P. Willis.
We live our lives in chains, and don't even know we have the key! – The Eagles.
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, compelled to starve at an unreal feast; a pilgrim panting for the rest to come; an exile anxious for his native home. – H. More.
Now all this is literally true, as men knew in the great past and as they will know again. – D.H. Lawrence Apocalypse.
If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. – Emerson
Smooth the descent, and easy the way. – Virgil. Aeneid.
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts, fading away,--
Thou wouldst still be ador'd as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will;
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still!
And thy cheeks unprofan'd by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear!
No, the heart that has truly lov'd never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose.
– Thomas Moore
Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly. For life is a creative idea; it can only find itself in changing forms. – Rabindranath Tagore.
Deem you that only you have thought and sense,
While heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth,
scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence?
Fool! what produced you? These things gave you birth:
So have they mind and God. – Campanella, Sonnet XIX.
If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on. – Brooke.
The records of an entity are written upon time and space as the skein of things. They may be called as images. For thoughts are things, and as they run so are the impressions made upon what we call time and space. – Edgar Cayce,(1562-1)
HYMN TO APOLLO--Shelly (Hot link to the Hymn page).
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.–Lucan.
Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul. – Pythagoras.
If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there. – John Newton.
And the winds of the South and North;
Of mountains and Moon and Mars,
And the ages sent me forth! – Edward H.S. Terry.
If a universe could create itself, it would embody the powers of a creator, and we should be forced to conclude that the universe itself is a God. – George Davis.
Wernher von Braun.
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the Light of common day. – Wordsworth.
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. –
"Oh my heart that I have had when on Earth, don't stand up against me as a witness, don't make a case against me beside the great god."--(Hieroglyph translation).
[The jackal-headed god Anubis weighs the deceased's heart, site of conscience, against the feather of maat, or things as they should be].
The day came when Eragon went to the glade beyond Oromis's hut, seated himself on the polished white stump in the center of the mossy hollow, and–when he opened his mind to observe the creatures around him–sensed not just the birds, beasts, and insects but also the plants of the forest.
The plants possessed a different type of consciousness than animals: slow, deliberate, and decentralized, but in their own way just as cognizant of their surroundings as Eragon himself was. The faint pulse of the plants' awareness bathed the galaxy of the stars that wheeled behind his eyes–each bright spark representing a life–in a soft, omnipresent glow. Even the most barren soil teemed with organisms; the land itself was alive and sentient.
Intelligent life, he concluded, existed everywhere.
As Eragon immersed himself in the thoughts and feelings of the beings around him, he was able to attain a state of inner peace so profound that, during that time, he ceased to exist as an individual. He allowed himself to become a nonentity, a void, a receptacle for the voices of the world. Nothing escaped his attention, for his attention was focused on nothing.
He was the forest and its inhabitants.
Is that what a god feels like? wondered Eragon when he returned to himself.
He left the glade, sought out Oromis in his hut, and knelt before the elf, saying, "Master, I have done as you told me to. I listened until I heard no more." – Christopher Paolini. Eldest–Inheritance–Book two.
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