Horizontal Quotes - page 4
The feeling I have about America, about the whole continent-flora, fauna, architecture, peoples, customs-is this: nothing vital was ever begun here... nothing of value. As far as I can determine, nothing ever will get started, in this deep, vital sense. They can blow things up to the most colossal proportions, make a network of cities which will obliterate the now intervening countryside-still it will make no difference. It is a horizontal movement-space-filling-and consequently futile.
Henry Miller
The third general fact on which this theory is founded, is, that the stratified rocks, instead of being either horizontal, or nearly so, as they no doubt were originally, are now found possessing all degrees of elevation, and some of them even perpendicular to the horizon; to which we must add, that those strata which were once at the bottom of the sea are now raised up, many of them several thousand feet above its surface. ...This force, which has burst in pieces the solid pavement on which the ocean rests, and has raised up rocks from the bottom of the sea, into mountains... exceeds any which we see actually exerted, but seems to come nearer to the cause of the volcano or the earthquake than to any other, of which the effects are directly observed. The immense disturbance, therefore, of the strata, is in this theory ascribed to heat acting with an expansive power, and elevating those rocks which it had before consolidated.
James Hutton