Tomas stopped and looked at the three Oankali. "Do you believe in spirits?” "We believe in life,” Ahajas said. "Life after death?” Ahajas smoothed her tentacles briefly in agreement. "When I'm dead,” she said, "I will nourish other life.” "But I mean-” "If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.” "...it would?” "Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That's what we believe in.” "Nothing more?” Ahajas became smooth enough with amusement to reflect firelight. "No, Lelka. Nothing more.”.
Octavia ButlerRelated topics
agreement amusement believe body dead death dissolution enough form full great mean nothing perhaps smooth stop thousand three way yes yearsRelated quotes
He who has envisioned evolution will approach it carefully, joyously brushing away the dust on the path. Most important, there will be no fear in him. And rejecting the unnecessary he will acquire simplicity. It is easy to understand that the realization of evolution is always beautiful.
Again they will ask: "Why at the beginning of the path is so much that is pleasant accorded and so much forgiven?" It is because in the beginning all fires are full blown and the called one walks as a torch. It is up to him to choose the quality of his fire. He who comprehends the discipline of spirit will understand the direction of the fire and will approach the cooperation for the General Good. The end of the path can be illumined by athousand fires of the General Good. These thousand fires will light the rainbow of the aura. Therefore, the discipline of spirit is wings!
Nicholas Roerich
I gave up on this stuff. I gave up on my species and ... I gave up on my countrymen. Because I think we squandered great gifts. I think humans were given great great gifts: walking upright, binocular vision, opposable thumb, large brain ... We grew. We had great gifts, and we gave it all up for both money and God ... We gave it all up to superstition, primitive superstition, primitive shit ... Invisible man in the sky, looking down, keeping track of what we do, make sure we don't do the wrong thing, if we do, he puts us in hell, where we burn forever. That kind of shit is very limiting for this brain we have. So we keep ourselves limited. And then we want a toy and a gizmo and gold and we want shiny things, and we want something to plug in that will make big big big things for us... And all that shit is nothing! It's nothing.
George Carlin
According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is force, and the latter is produced by the will. As this will proceeds from an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material organs of human thought in it, being the superfine pure emanation of the highest divinity itself - (Plato's "Father") it proceeds from the beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Even today I wonder why those Germans didn't wait for me at the villa and send someone to look for me in Turin. It is because of their failure that I am still free and up here. Why I should have been saved and not Gallo, or Tono, or Cate, I don't know. Perhaps because I'm supposed to suffer for others? Because I'm the most useless and don't deserve anything, not even punishment? Because I went into a church that time? The experience of danger creates more cowards every day. It makes one stupid. I have reached the point of being alive only by chance, when many better men than I are dead, I don't like it, it's not enough. At time, after having listened to the useless radio and looked through the windows at the empty vineyards, I think that living by accident is not living, and I wonder if have really escaped.
Cesare Pavese
A million and a half of people spread over the Atlantic seaboard might be thought no great number; but it was a new thing in the world. ...which had in fact been carefully noted by Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet on The Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.-that within three-quarters of a century the population of the continental colonies had doubled every twenty-five years, whereas the population of Old England during a hundred years past had not doubled once and now stood at only some six and a half millions. ...With these facts in mind, one might indeed say that a people with so much vitality and expansive power was abundantly able to pay taxes; but perhaps it was also a fair inference, if any one was disposed to press the matter, that unless it was so minded, such a people was already, or assuredly soon would be, equally able not to pay them.
Carl L. Becker