Under the old dispensation, before the advent of science, when this little world was all, and the sun, moon, and stars were merely fixtures overhead to give light and warmth, the conception of a being adequate to create and control it all was easier. The storms were expressive of his displeasure, the heavens were his throne, and the earth was his footstool. But in the light of modern astronomy one finds himself looking in vain for the God of his fathers, the magnified man who ruled the ancient world. In his place we have an infinite and eternal Power whose expression is the visible universe, and to whom man is no more and no less than any other creature.
John BurroughsRelated topics
astronomy conception control displeasure earth easy expressive footstool less light looking man moon overhead place power science sun under vain warmth heavens starsRelated quotes
Scientists and archaeologists have no clue how the ancients were able to excavate, let alone move such huge stones on such rough and uneven terrain. They cannot be moved by any combination of modern equipment today. Whole books have been written on speculation as to how they moved these massive stones. Many writers conclude that aliens must have visited earth and done this with technology about which we know nothing! Ahhhh?...there is a much simpler solution...Ancient man, especially pre-flood, and for a few hundred years post-flood, lived lots longer and accumulated lots more knowledge than we have today! No "Aliens” required!
Kent Hovind
Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than we can see, that's the point. We can see the stars and the galaxies and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not fly apart, there needs to be a lot more of it - to make gravity work, you see. But no one can detect it. So there are lots of different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this is one of them. ... We think it's some kind of elementary particle. Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the particles are very hard to detect.
Philip Pullman
To be free, as I then knew myself to be, is to realize that all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism. To be joyous is to carry the ego to its last summit and to deliver it triumphantly. To know peace is total: it is the moment after, when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no longer even the consciousness of surrender. Peace is at the centre and when it is attainded the voice issues forth in praise and benediction. Then the voice carries far and wide, to the outermost limits of the universe. Then it heals, because it brings light and the warmth of compassion.
Henry Miller
A second sun blazed white and swelled visibly as he watched. What on Earth would have been-so many times had been-a climbing mushroom cloud was here in open space a perfect geometrical sphere, growing unbelievably. It swelled still larger, dropping from limelight white to to silvery violet, became blotched with purple, red and flame. And still it grew, until it blanked out the earth beyond it.
At the time it had been transformed into a radioactive cosmic cloud Circum-Terra had been passing over, or opposite, the North Atlantic; the swollen incandescent cloud was visible to most of the habitable portions of the globe, a burning symbol in the sky.
Robert A. Heinlein
And you, amiable debauchees, you who since youth have known no limits but those of your desires and who have been governed by your caprices alone, study the cynical Dolmancé, proceed like him and go as far as he if you too would travel the length of those flowered ways your lechery prepares for you; in Dolmancé's academy be at last convinced it is only by exploring and enlarging the sphere of his tastes and whims, it is only by sacrificing everything to the senses' pleasure that this individual, who never asked to be cast into this universe of woe, that this poor creature who goes under the name of Man, may be able to sow a smattering of roses atop the thorny path of life.
Marquis de Sade