When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself." A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
Stephen CraneRelated topics
cold desire disposing high hoot man nature night pathos perhaps personification saying situation tangible thing throw word yes hands feelsRelated quotes
Intelligence, then, is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions based on rational (truth-obeying) rules. The computer scientists Allen Newell and Herbert Simon fleshed this idea out further by noting that intelligence consists of specifying a goal, assessing the current situation to see how it differs from the goal, and applying a set of operations that reduce the difference. Perhaps reassuringly, by this definition human beings, not just aliens, are intelligent. We have desires, and we pursue them using beliefs, which, when all goes well, are at least approximately or probabilistically true.
Steven Pinker
The linga he raised was the stone of Somnath, for soma means the moon and natha means master, so that the whole word means master of the moon. The image was destroyed by the Prince Mahmud, may God be merciful to him! - AH 416. He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghaznin, with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels, and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Cakrasvamin, an idol of bronze, that had been brought from Taneshar. Another part of the idol from Somanath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghaznin, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet.
Al-Biruni
It came upon me sometime in my fifteenth year that I no longer woke up with sudden excitements-"Today I will get the Clerici solution! Today I will read about Humphry Davy and electric fish! Today I will finally understand diamagnetism, perhaps!” I no longer seemed to get these sudden illuminations, these epiphanies, these excitements which Flaubert (whom I was now reading) called "erections of the mind.” Erections of the body, yes, this was a new, exotic part of life-but those sudden raptures of the mind, those sudden landscapes of glory and illumination, seemed to have deserted or abandoned me. Or had I, in fact, abandoned them?
Oliver Sacks
[Labour will deal with racketeering in the price of land. ] I call that a socialist theme. Yes, and I should have thought a Liberal theme. That great modernizing party on this theme at least at Scarborough last week carried through an exercise in recidivism which places its present leadership some years behind the Liberals some 60 years ago. In 1909 and 1910 they filled the land with song-'God gave the land to the people'. Now in 1965 we have the first fruits of Liberal revisionism. While they would not intend to throw doubt on the Almighty's intention in this respect, their researches suggest he did not intend this declaration to be taken too literally.
Harold Wilson
What we used to think of as exotic can now only be found in countries that cannot afford Americanization. Meaning no home comforts, peppers, unleavened bread. It is a kind thing to take one's bit of tourist money there, to the deserving, and not put it in the hands of the disdainful Nicois or Cannois. If you can get into a country which is politically oppressed, that too is a good thing for the natives, for you are bringing a breath of freedom. Increasingly, perhaps, one ought to be travelling for the benefit of those who cannot afford or are not permitted to travel. We all belong to one another now, and no foreign country ought to be merely a sideshow....
Anthony Burgess