Ark Story Quotes

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Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Often you shall think your road impassable, sombre and companionless. Have will and plod along; and round each curve you shall find a new companion.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
How much more infinite a sea is man? Be not so childish as to measure him from head to foot and think you have found his borders.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
The more elaborate his labyrinths, the further from the Sun his face.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Logic is immaturity weaving its nets of gossamer wherewith it aims to catch the behemoth of knowledge. Logic is a crutch for the cripple, but a burden for the swift of foot and a greater burden still for the wise.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
So think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire upon the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
No love is Love that subjugates the Lover. No love is Love that feeds on flesh and blood. No love is Love that draws a woman to a man only to breed more women and men and thus perpetuate their bondage to the flesh.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Too vast is Man and too imponderable his nature. Too varied are his talents, and too inexhaustible his strength. Beware of those who attempt to set him boundaries.Live as if your God Himself had need of you His life to live. And so, in truth, He does.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.
Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (Paperback))
إذا كنتم عبيداً في الأرض وقيل لكم: ازهدوا في حرية الأرض،ففي السماء تنتظركم حرية لاتوصف. اجيبوه: من لم يتذوق الحرية في الأرض لن يعرف طعمها في السماء If you are slaves on Earth & you were told: “Renounce Earthly Freedom, for in Heaven awaits you unimaginalbe Freedom!” Answer him: “He who did not taste Freedom on Earth, will not know it in Heaven!
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
The really poor is he who misuses what he has. The really rich is he who well uses what he has.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man.You are the tree of Life. Beware of fractionating yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother- soil. That is precisely what you do when you love one part more than the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest. No love is possible except by the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self. Therefore is God all Love, because he loves himself. So long as you are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your love is ephemeral.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Vast is the difference between ‘holding’ and ‘being held’. You hold, only what you love. What you hate holds you. Avoid being held.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
To the unspoiled, even a snikebite is a loving kiss. But to the spoiled even a loving kiss is a snake bite.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called The Ark)
Except you be fed with the grapes of Love you shall no be filled with the wine of Understanding.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Whoever cannot find a temple in his heart, the same can never find his heart in any temple.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Men and women yearners must realize their unity even while in the flesh; not by communion of the flesh, but by the Will to Freedom from the flesh and all the impediments it places in their way to perfect Unity and Holy Understanding
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...] You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?
Adam Rex (The True Meaning of Smekday)
Look not into a passion’s mouth to see if it have fangs or honeyed mandibles. The bee that gathers up the nectar of the flowerers gathers their poison, too.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Not celibate are they who wear monastic garb and shut themselves away behind thick walls and massive iron gates, But celibate are they whose hearts and minds are celibate, whether they be in cloisters or in the public marts.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called The Ark)
The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.
Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
A vast tenderness swept him, and a great reverence. Now she belonged to him and her face was his to shield. In regret and joy he draped her, his personal Torah, which now must be returned to the ark to await their covenant.
Marjorie Holmes (Two from Galilee: The Story of Mary and Joseph)
Where I'm at is a big Episcopal church in downtown Newark, New Jersey, sitting in the dark while I try to rescue the doomed bits and pieces of life, in the hope that a mere story can become Noah's Ark and deliver all the living things of the past to a bright and glorious immortality?
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters Remix)
Be steady. Make ready. Keep your eyes, and ears, and tongues on fast so that your hearts may know that holy hunger which, once appeased, leaves you forever full. You
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
Less possessing – less possessed. More possessing – more possessed. More possessed – less assessed. Less possessed – more assessed.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Once again, I am sorry to take a sledgehammer to so small and fragile a nut, but I have to do so because more than 40 per cent of the American people believe literally in the story of Noah’s Ark.
Richard Dawkins (The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution)
Go! Pray as you have been taught to pray. Pray anyway – for anything. Go! Do all the things commanded you to do till you become self-taught and self-commanded, and till you learn to make each word a prayer, each deed a sacrifice. Go in peace. Mirdad must see that your morning meal be plentiful and sweet.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
Yours is a world of cradles turning into tombs, and tombs becoming cradles; of days devouring nights, and nights regurgitating days; of peace declaring war, and war suing for peace; of smiles afloat on tears, and tears aglow with smiles.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
Our Master puts the desire to procreate in us to be sure that we are fruitful and multiply. He knows how important animals are to the planet because most animals He allows to reproduce in great number. He put every one of us on the ark for a reason. Do you think it’s a mistake that dogs and cats have litters of 8, 9, 10 or more and people typically only have one or maybe two? It’s no mistake. It’s because God intends that there is more than enough four-legged love to go around.
Kate McGahan (Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: An Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal (Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Trilogy Book 3))
Once Understanding is unveiled, then victory is won and Peace established in the heart for ever and anon. An understanding heart is ever at peace even amid a war-dazed world. An ignorant heart is a dual heart. A dual heart makes for a dual world. A dual world breeds constant strife and war. Whereas an understanding heart is a single heart. A single heart makes for a single world. A single world is a world at peace. For it takes two to make a war.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
He smirked. “Decision time, pretty lady... back to reality?” She touched his cheek. “Or down the rabbit hole?
Jake Vander-Ark (Fallout Dreams)
You must not impose yourselves on any man. For that which is imposed by force is soon or late deposed by force
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
It’s hard, since Noah, not to see a rainbow as a sign of hope.
Sheldon Vanauken (A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph)
In that, you take seven loaves of bread for a seven lives journey" Should I take seven thousand then ? "Not even one
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
I always liked the story of Noah's Ark and the idea of starting anew by rescuing the things you like and leaving the rest behind.
Zach Braff
I promise to write your story, I’m sorry I stopped. I’ll write you the best story, I-I’ll make you a classic, the most famous ever and you’ll never die!
Lucian Bane (The Scribbler Guardian (Arks Of Octava #1))
The ark was like a portable computer hard drive and Noah was a one-man Geek Squad, and he dumped God's most important files onto it before he zorched the virus-ridden computer that was the world.
BikeSnobNYC (The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence)
The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?
Judith Hayes
Some serious Christians may possibly tremble for the Ark, and think the Christian religion in danger when divested of the patronage of civil power. They may fear inroads from licentiousness and infidelity, on the one hand, and from sectaries and party divisions on the other. But we may dismiss our fears, when we consider that truth can never be in real hazard, where there is a sufficiency of light and knowledge, and full liberty to vindicate it.
David McCullough (The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West)
To Juan at the Winter Solstice There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling, Whether as learned bard or gifted child; To it all lines or lesser gauds belong That startle with their shining Such common stories as they stray into. Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues, Or strange beasts that beset you, Of birds that croak at you the Triple will? Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns Below the Boreal Crown, Prison to all true kings that ever reigned? Water to water, ark again to ark, From woman back to woman: So each new victim treads unfalteringly The never altered circuit of his fate, Bringing twelve peers as witness Both to his starry rise and starry fall. Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty, All fish below the thighs? She in her left hand bears a leafy quince; When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling, How many the King hold back? Royally then he barters life for love. Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched, Whose coils contain the ocean, Into whose chops with naked sword he springs, Then in black water, tangled by the reeds, Battles three days and nights, To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore? Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly, The owl hoots from the elder, Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup: Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. The log groans and confesses: There is one story and one story only. Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling, Do not forget what flowers The great boar trampled down in ivy time. Her brow was creamy as the crested wave, Her sea-blue eyes were wild But nothing promised that is not performed.
Robert Graves
I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast. For I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes and ordinary dreams and ordinary fears. I, too, dreamed of wealth and riches, health and strength. I, too, feared hunger and poverty, war and weakness. I was the neighbour who lived in the next house. The man standing in the subway on his way to work: who held a match to his cigarette: who walked with his dog. I was the soldier shaking with fear: the man berating the umpire at the ball game: the citizen in the privacy of the voting booth, happily electing the worthless candidate. I was the man who lived a thousand times and died a thousand times in all man’s six thousand years of record. I was the man who sailed with Noah  in his ark, who was the multitude that crossed the sea that Moses held apart, who hung from the cross next to Christ. I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, legends are never remembered.
Harold Robbins (A Stone for Danny Fisher)
The air was rank, and on my left, in a broad green meadow, arranged neatly in pairs, were dead lions and dead walruses and dead gazelles. It was like some horrible parade leading towards a cruel parody of Noah's ark, a ship for everything that was gone and never coming back, everything that would not be saved.
Joe Hill (Strange Weather: Four Short Stories)
No hells or heavens has Mirdad to offer you, but Holy Understanding which lifts you far beyond the fire of any hell and the luxuriance of any heaven. Not with the hand, but with the heart must you receive the gift. For that the heart must needs be disencumbered of every stray desire and will, save the desire and will to understand.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Rejoice, Micayon. Yours is a prophet’s dream. The Great Nostalgia has made your world too small, and made you a stranger in that world. It has unloosed your imagination from the grip of the despotic senses; and imagination has brought you forth your Faith. And Faith shall lift you high above the stagnant, stifling world and carry you across the dreary emptiness and up the Rugged Mountains where every faith must needs be tried and purified of the last dregs of Doubt. And Faith so purified and triumphant shall lead you to the boundaries of the eternally green summit and there deliver you into the hands of Understanding. Having discharged its task, Faith shall retire, and Understanding shall guide your steps to the unutterable Freedom of the Summit which is the true, the boundless, and all-including home of God and the Overcoming Man.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Stories were fictional in Octava—that was the law.
Lucian Bane (The Scribbler Guardian (Arks of Octava #1))
You broke Octava’s Ancient Code when you entered his story.
Lucian Bane (The Scribbler Guardian (Arks of Octava #1))
إن وراء كل هدف تخطئونه، هدفاً آخر تدركونه، وهو الأصلح لكم والأهم، فلا تجدنّ الخيبة إلى قلوبكم سبيلاً.
ميخائيل نعيمة (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
For Man is held by everything he holds. Release your grip on things if you would not be in their grip.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
A perfect unit is the Earth. Why do you persist in disremembering her with swords and boundary marks?
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
The story of Noah's Ark illustrates that only the few selected animals, as well as human beings, will ever see the gates of paradise.
Mwanandeke Kindembo
It is my light that sees me in your eye. It is your light that sees you in my eye. Were I a total darkness your eye, looking at me, would be a total darkness.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Creep where you cannot walk. Walk where you cannot run. Run where you cannot fly. Fly where you cannot bring the whole universe to a standstill within you.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Man, too, therefore, is such an holy triune; a consciousness, a word, an understanding. Man, too, is a creator like his God. His I is his creation. Why is he not so balanced as his God?
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
Much of [John Hanning] Speke's Journal of the Discovery of the Source of Nile is devoted to descriptions of the physical and moral ugliness of Africa's "primitive races," in whose condition he found "a strikingly existing proof of the Holy Scriptures." For his text, Speke took the story in Genesis 9, which tells how Noah, when he was just six hundred years old and had safely skippered his ark over the flood to dry land, got drunk and passed out naked in his tent. On emerging from his oblivion, Noah learned that his youngest son, Ham, had seen him naked; that Ham had told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, of the spectacle; and that Shem and Japheth had, with their backs chastely turned, covered the old man with a garment. Noah responded by cursing the progeny of Ham's son, Canaan, saying, "A slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers." Amid the perplexities of Genesis, this is one of the most enigmatic stories, and it has been subjected to many bewildering interpretations--most notably that Ham was the original black man. To the gentry of the American South, the weird tale of Noah's curse justified slavery, and to Spake and his colonial contemporaries it spelled the history of Africa's peoples. On "contemplating these sons of Noah," he marveled that "as they were then, so they appear to be now.
Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families)
Resting in the calm eye of a storm raging all around him, Noah is saved in the ark as the flood surges over the land. In the flood narrative it is God who saves Noah from God. In the midst of the torrent of his own raging justice God places a floating ship of mercy.
Christopher Watkin (Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture)
Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars. But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all. To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want to get ahead. The truth is, you don’t. If you love and want to make movies about issues of social import, get your hands on Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network. Read it. Then watch the movie. Then read it again. If you love and want to make big blockbusters that also have great artistic merit, do the same thing with Lawrence Kasdan’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark screenplay and the movie made from it. Think about how the screenplays made you feel. And how the movies built from these screenplays did or didn’t hit you the same way. […] This sounds basic, right? That’s because it is basic. And it’s true. All the information you need is the movies and screenplays you love. And in the books you’ve read and the relationships you’ve had and your ability to use those things.
Brian Koppelman
Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.
Anne Sexton
Because of their lust for authority men are in constant turmoil. Those in authority are ever fighting to maintain it. Those out of authority are ever struggling to snatch it from the hands of those who hold it. While Man, the God in swaddling-bands, is trampled under foot and hoof and left on the field of battle unnoticed, unattended and unsolved. So furious is the fight, and so blood crazed the fighters that none, alas, would stop to lift the painted mask off the face of the spurious bride and expose her monstrous ugliness to all. Believe, O monks, that no authority is worth the flutter of an eyelash, except the authority of Holy Understanding which is priceless. For that no sacrifice is great. Attain it once, and you shall hold it to the end of Time. And it shall charge your words with more power than all the armies of the world can ever command; and it shall bless your deeds with more beneficence than all the world authorities combined can ever dream of bringing to the world.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Naimy writes, ‘As a living branch of a living vine, when buried in the ground, strikes root and ultimately becomes an independent grape-bearing vine like its mother with which it remains connected, so shall Man, the living branch of the Vine Divine, when buried in the soil of its divinity, become a God, remaining permanently one with God.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
About 4,400 years ago 8 people stepped off Noah’s ark. According to the United Nations Population Growth Statistics, the world’s population grows at about .47% per year. That is the growth rate for all civilizations who kept records. Suppose you put $8.00 in the bank 4,400 years ago and received .47% a year. How much money would you have? What a coincidence! It would be about $7,000,000,000. That’s kind of odd, because 4,400 years ago 8 people stepped off the ark and now we have about 7,000,000,000 people on planet earth. God’s math works! Compound interest is something we teach to seventh-graders. You don’t have to be a professor to figure this out. A twelve-year-old can do the calculation. Ask any seventh-grader, the algebraic equation looks like this: A=P (1+r/n)t . . . where "A " is the ending amount (about 7,000,000,000 in this case), "P " is the beginning amount (8 in this case), "r " is the interest rate (.47% in this case), "n " is the number of compoundings a year (1 in this case), and "t " is the total number of years (4,400 in this case).
Michael Ben Zehabe (Unanswered Questions in the Sunday News)
Collapse is the constant state of humanity, she tells herself; the story of the flood and the great ark that saved the creatures two by two is only the first refrain of a song that is to be sung over and over, the earth's gradual and repeated diminishment, civilization foundering to dust, until the final death of the children of Eve with the apocalypse, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven angels, the seven bowls.
Lauren Groff (Matrix)
Seek no authority over the lives of men; of that the Omniwill is master. Nor seek authority over the goods of men; for men are chained so much to their goods as to their lives, and they distrust and hate the meddlers with their chains. But seek a way into the hearts of men through Love and Understanding; for once installed therein you can and better work to loose men of their chains. For love will guide your hand, while Understanding holds the lantern.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Let things alone and labour not to change them. For they seem what they seem only because you seem what you seem. They neither see nor speak except you lend them sight and speech. If they be harsh of speech, look only to your tongue. If they be ugly of appearance, search first and last your eye. Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled. Nor ask of things to break their seals. Unseal your selves, and all will be unsealed.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark)
Normally, you don’t think about how many times you do laps. If you do, you start to get a little dizzy, go all Camus about the futility of the situation. Your laces on the right side start to get loose from always turning against them. Normally I switch it up, do a little fancy footwork and skate backward for a bit, but what if that messed up the youth magic? What if I sped up time instead of reversing it and my face melted off like the Nazis when they opened the Ark of the Covenant?
Wendy Wimmer (Entry Level)
is the “waters” of the celestial “ocean” which come to mind, in which Noah’s Ark now swims as a constellation. In the Indian version of this story the ark is a boat on which the Seven Rishis (better known to us as the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major), and the Vedic culture that they represent, are ferried to safety by a giant Fish (the constellation Pisces). Gazing on myth from this angle we can find in the skies many of the cast of characters of “The Greatness of Saturn.” Aditi [* FOOTNOTE: A well-thought-out cosmology which catalogues such extensions of ‘Earth’ into ‘Space’ is presented by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Namlet’s Mill, and the interested reader will find a wealth of detail worth pondering in that book.] (‘The Unbroken, Unbounded One’; by extension, eternity) is the mother of the devas, the ‘shining celestials,’ and Diti (‘The Bound, Divided, Cut One’) is the mother of the asuras, the enemies of the devas. There is good reason to believe that Aditi represents the northern celestial hemisphere and the zodiac, which being the part of the heavens that is visible throughout the year
Robert E. Svoboda (The Greatness of Saturn: A Therapeutic Myth)
This unusual situation is due to the fact that the tablet omits all outbreaks of the conventional literary structure – Anu opened his mouth to speak, saying to the lady Ishtar … followed by Ishtar opened her mouth to speak, saying to her father, Anu … Gilgamesh VI: 87–88; 92–93 – with which Babylonian narrative literature is, not to put too fine a point on it, slightly tiresomely littered. In fact, I cannot come up with another example of Babylonian mythological or epic literature that is devoid of this characteristic speech-linking device. Its repetitive nature at first sight looks like a remnant of oral literature, where things are repeated more than we would repeat them today, which the modern connoisseur of cuneiform literature just has to accept, or appreciate as atmospheric and authentic. On reflection, however, it is just the opposite. The characteristic dependence on this formula originates in the very transition from oral to written literature, for who is speaking at any one time will always be clear in a storyteller’s presentation, but the process of writing down what has previously been spoken aloud creates ambiguity for the reader unless each speaker is clearly identified.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
Do you know the story of Noah and his sons, child? How they filled their ship with everything to start the world anew? For a thousand years your city, this crumbling capital”—he waves a hand toward a window—“was like that ark. Only instead of two of every living creature, do you know what the good Lord stacked inside this ship?” Beyond the shuttered window the first cocks crow. She can feel Himerius twitching beside the fire, all his attention on the silver. “Books.” The scribe smiles. “And in our tale of Noah and the ship of books, can you guess what is the flood?” She shakes her head. “Time. Day after day, year after year, time wipes the old books from the world. The
Anthony Doerr (Cloud Cuckoo Land)
Maybe! That’s the moral of many, many stories. Chaos emerges in a household, bit by bit. Mutual unhappiness and resentment pile up. Everything untidy is swept under the rug, where the dragon feasts on the crumbs. But no one says anything, as the shared society and negotiated order of the household reveals itself as inadequate, or disintegrates, in the face of the unexpected and threatening. Everybody whistles in the dark, instead. Communication would require admission of terrible emotions: resentment, terror, loneliness, despair, jealousy, frustration, hatred, boredom. Moment by moment, it’s easier to keep the peace. But in the background, in Billy Bixbee’s house, and in all that are like it, the dragon grows. One day it bursts forth, in a form that no one can ignore. It lifts the very household from its foundations. Then it’s an affair, or a decades-long custody dispute of ruinous economic and psychological proportions. Then it’s the concentrated version of the acrimony that could have been spread out, tolerably, issue by issue, over the years of the pseudo-paradise of the marriage. Every one of the three hundred thousand unrevealed issues, which have been lied about, avoided, rationalized away, hidden like an army of skeletons in some great horrific closet, bursts forth like Noah’s flood, drowning everything. There’s no ark, because no one built one, even though everyone felt the storm gathering.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
But surely the commute that defines the era was Noah's voyage aboard his eponymous ark, and to this day it remains the most epic commuting story ever told. As most people know, God felt that Earth had essentially "jumped the shark" (or "raped the angel" as they used to say back then), so rather than try to fix it, He instead decided to simply wash everyone away in a great flood and start over from scratch--just as you might do to your computer's hard drive if it has a really bad virus. So God spoke to Noah and commanded him to build an ark, aboard which he'd carry two of every animal in the world....Thus was born humankind's lust for gigantic vehicles, for God's instructions to Noah were basically the world's first car commercial, and the sales pitch was this: Large vehicles are your salvation.
BikeSnobNYC
Marie sighs and rubs her weary face with her two hands. Collapse is the constant state of humanity, she tells herself; the story of the flood and the great ark that saved the creatures two by two is only the first refrain of a song that is to be sung over and over, the earth’s gradual and repeated diminishment, civilization after civilization foundering to dust, until the final death of the children of Eve with the apocalypse, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven angels, the seven bowls. In the end, the earth will crack and the wicked will be cast into the lake of fire. Marie suspects this fiery end would be the stone and the soil and the waters of the earth itself, through human folly and greed made too hot for it to be willing to bear any more life upon its back. So it will go, and so it would be; and Marie cannot stop it, even if she had the force of will any longer to do so.
Lauren Groff (Matrix)
Begin in Genesis with the well-loved story of Noah, derived from the Babylonian myth of Uta-Napisthim and known from the older mythologies of several cultures. The legend of the animals going into the ark two by two is charming, but the moral of the story of Noah is appalling. God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children and also, for good measure, the rest of the presumably blameless) animals as well. Of course, irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. Such picking and choosing is a matter of personal decision, just as much, or as little, as the atheist's decision to follow this moral precept or that was a personal decision, without an absolute foundation. If one of these is 'morality flying by the seat of its pants,' so is the other.
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
…для прочтения клинописного текста надо сначала идентифицировать определенный знак, затем понять, использован ли он как логограмма, силлабограмма, фонетический комплемент или детерминатив, и только после этого окончательно выбрать правильное звучание (если знак распознан как силлабограмма). Начинающие писцы, как теперь начинающие ассириологи, должны были сразу понять, что любой клинописный знак может иметь несколько звуковых значений; и наоборот — что любой звук может быть записан различными знаками; другими словами, поливалентность — наше всё. На практике, однако, не всякое использование знаков допускалось традицией. Поскольку слова обычно делятся на слоги, глазами мы быстро научаемся выбирать наиболее гармоничное и грамматически правильное прочтение последовательности знаков, отметая маловероятные или попросту невозможные варианты прочтения. С самых древнейших времен месопотамские писцы начали составлять списки слов (словники), потребность в которых была связана с необходимостью зафиксировать значения новообразованных знаков, чтобы избежать путаницы и чтобы легче было их заучивать.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
I will not delay the reader with lengthy quotations from the very many Taiwanese flood myths that were collected from amongst the indigenous population, primarily by Japanese scholars, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Typically they tell a story of a warning from the gods, the sound of thunder in the sky, terrifying earthquakes, the pouring down of a wall of water which engulfs mankind, and the survival of a remnant who had either fled to mountain tops or who floated to safety on some sort of improvised vessel. To provide just one example (from the Ami tribe of central Taiwan), we hear how the four gods of the sea conspired with two gods of the land, Kabitt and Aka, to destroy mankind. The gods of the sea warned Kabitt and Aka: 'In five days when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain where there are stars.' Kabitt and Aka heeded the warning immediately and fled to the mountain and 'when they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher'. All the lowland settlements were inundated but two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned: 'For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of their house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain.' So here, handed down since time immemorial by Taiwanese headhunters, we have the essence of the story of Noah's Ark, which is also the story of Manu and the story of Zisudra and (with astonishingly minor variations) the story of all the deluge escapees and survivors in all the world. At some point a real investigation should be mounted into why it is that furious tribes of archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists continue to describe the similarities amongst these myths of earth-destroying floods as coincidental, rooted in exaggeration, etc., and thus irrelevant as historical testimony. This is contrary to reason when we know that over a period of roughly 10,000 years between 17,000 and 7000 years ago more than 25 million square kilometres of the earth's surface were inundated. The flood epoch was a reality and in my opinion, since our ancestors went through it, it is not surprising that they told stories and bequeathed to us their shared memories of it. As well as continuing to unveil it through sciences like inundation mapping and palaeo-climatology, therefore, I suggest that if we want to learn what the world was really like during the meltdown we should LISTEN TO THE MYTHS.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
The characteristic wedge feature is a direct consequence of impressing the signs with a straight-edged writing tool in contrast to drawing with a point, and it is this that led the nineteenth-century decipherers to name the script cuneiform, derived from the Latin cuneus, ‘wedge’. Each application of the edge of the stylus-tip left a line ending in a wedge-head, be it the top of a vertical, the left end of a horizontal wedge, or a diagonal produced by impressing the corner of the stylus.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
Cuneiform absolutely cannot be written with the left hand, and any school candidate who manifested that sinister tendency in antiquity would, no doubt, have it beaten out of him, as has often happened since in human history.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
Fingers of bitumen Here we have to understand the measure as the Sumerian ideogram ŠU.ŠI (usually written ŠU.SI), standing for the Babylonian ubānu, ‘finger’, one of which comes out at about 1.66 centimetres. Bitumen is thus applied to all ark surfaces to a depth of one finger.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
When it occurs in literary texts šár = 3,600 is conventionally understood as no more than a conveniently large round number. This is evident when a well-wisher writes in a letter, ‘may the Sun God for my sake keep you well for 3,600 years’, or a battle-flushed Assyrian king claims to have ‘blinded 4 × 3,600 survivors’. Assyriologists therefore often translate šár as ‘myriad’, as conveying the right sort of mythological size and feel, although of course the Greek decimal myriad literally means ‘10,000’, whereas Mesopotamians naturally thought in sixties, one ŠÁR being 60 × 60. What is truly surprising in the Ark Tablet calculations is that this sign 3,600 does not function just as a large round number but is to be taken literally.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.
Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)
This field of activity generated a vast literature of carefully assembled one-line omens on this pattern: If A happened, B will happen. Here the sought-for outcome B, known as the apodosis, is deemed to be the consequence of an observed phenomenon, the protasis A. One
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it. Writing as I would define it serves to record language by means of an agreed set of symbols that enable a message to be played back like a wax cylinder recording. The reader's eye runs over the signs and tells the brain how each is pronounced and the inner message springs into life.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
Legacy of Love In the future, when your children ask you, “What do these stones mean?” tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. —JOSHUA 4:6-7     In your family’s history there are probably many examples of sacrifice—some you may know about, but many other sacrifices probably took place and were not recorded, mentioned, or elaborated on in family stories and journals. Consider how you have learned life lessons from those who did make sacrifices. What pleasures or luxuries or privileges do you enjoy today because of the toils and trials of past generations? How you honor such sacrifices becomes a part of your legacy to the next generation. If you are raising a family with God’s love and truth, that is honoring your life and the lives of those before you. If you are mentoring other women or girls, that is honoring the labor of many women of the past. When you have compassion on a stranger, that is honoring the acts of service that took place before you were born. We never want to let future generations forget what great sacrifices were made in order for us to be the persons, the families, and the nation we are. That’s why traditions are so important in life. They are attempts to pass on to future generations what of value has been passed on to us today. Joshua built a monument of stones so that the children of the future would ask about them and about their own heritage. What will your legacy be? What do you hope your children or your friends or your loved ones will carry with them after you are gone? Commit your ways to the ways of God, and your legacy will endure. It will become a heritage of faith and faithfulness that will help to encourage and inspire others. Your legacy won’t be in material possessions or in the details of a will. Your legacy will be discovered in the stones…the stepping stones…that created your path—each stone carved and polished by the Creator Himself. Prayer: Father God, remind me of the sacrifices made by those believers who persevered before
Emilie Barnes (Walk with Me Today, Lord: Inspiring Devotions for Women)
Jesus, in the story of creation, already planning the new creation; Jesus supreme above the ruins of the fall; Jesus in the ark, the rainbow and the dove; Jesus in the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the ladder of Jacob, and the story of Joseph; Jesus in the Paschal lamb, the desert manna…. The face of Jesus can be traced like water lines in fine paper back of every page, for He is the Alpha and the Omega: the first and the last of this Holy Book.
Ann Spangler (Praying the Names of Jesus)
I don’t think most people start by saying ‘no’ to God, they’re just not sure they’re prepared to say ‘yes’.  And then as time goes by it’s as if it gets harder and harder to say ‘yes’ because they’ve developed a whole lifestyle around ‘no.
Tom Flaherty (The Ark: A Story of Mercy, Sin, Giants, and Judgment)
I didn’t believe that God told some guy, however many thousands of years ago, “Hey, build a ginormous boat in this desert over here.” I liked it as a story, though, because it seemed like the kind of thing God ought to say. There were crazy stupid things that needed to get done, or should have gotten done, or turned out to be wonderful when they did get done. And maybe, if God ever did tell people what to do, it was to stick up for these crazy stupid things that no one in their right mind would ever do otherwise.
Emily Horner (A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend)
You know what’s weird, though? It’s weird that the ark would be such a kids’ story, you know? I mean, it’s…really a story about death. Every person who isn’t in Noah’s family? They die. Every animal, apart from the two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It’s the worst tragedy ever,” I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest. I’d been speaking too fast without breathing, and I sucked down air before speaking again.
Adam Rex (The True Meaning of Smekday)
The story of Noah’s Ark, if you’re familiar, left out the part where the animal kingdom is repopulated entirely through rampant incest.
Tom B. Night (Mind Painter)
لا تحاولوا استئصال الشر من العالم،حتى الأشواك والأعشاب البرية تصلح سماداً الأرض.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
will dampen a parade real quick. Everyone goes home. Deeply distressed, David returns to Jerusalem. The ark is kept at the home of Obed-Edom while David sorts things out. Apparently, he succeeds, because at the end of three months David returns, reclaims the ark, and resumes the parade. This time there is no death. There is dancing. David enters Jerusalem with rejoicing. And “David danced before the Lord with all his might” (6:14). Uzzah’s tragedy teaches this: God comes on his own terms. Two men. One dead. The other dancing. What do they teach us? Specifically, what do they teach us about invoking the presence of God? This is what David wants to know: “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” (6:9). In the story of David and his giants, this is one giant-size issue. Is God a distant deity?
Max Lucado (Facing Your Giants: God Still Does the Impossible)
The books of what is now the Old Testament thus probably came into existence between the ninth and the second centuries BCE. This does not necessarily mean that the records of earlier ages are pure fiction, but it makes it hard to press their details as solid historical evidence. Many readers of the Bible would recognize that the stories of the early history of the world – Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel – are mythical or legendary, but it may be more challenging to think that the stories of Abraham or Jacob or Moses are also essentially legends, even though people bearing those names may well have existed. No one is in a position to say they are definitely untrue, but there is no reasonable evidence that would substantiate them. This is also the case with the early kings, Saul, David and Solomon, even though the stories about them do make sense within a period (the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE) about which we know something, from the archaeological record. With the later, eighth- and seventh-century kings (for example, Hezekiah and Jehoiachin) there is definite corroboration from Assyrian and Babylonian records, and we are less in the dark. But even some of the stories of life after the exile, in the Persian period, may be fictional: most biblical scholars think that the book of Esther, for example, is a kind of novella rather than a piece of historical writing. A later date does not of itself mean that a given book is more likely to be accurate: much depends on its genre, as we shall see in the next chapter. The biblical books of the Old Testament thus probably span a period of about eight centuries, though they may incorporate older written material – ancient poems, for example – and may in some cases rest on older, orally transmitted folk-memories. But the bulk of written records in ancient Israel seem to come from a core period of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, with heavy concentrations in some particular ages: most think, for example, that the period of the exile was particularly rich in generating written texts, as was perhaps the early Persian age, even though we know so little about the political events of the time. The flowering of Israelite literature thus came a couple of centuries earlier than the classical age in Greece. The Old Testament, taken by and large, is thus older than much Greek literature, but not enormously so. Compared with the literature of ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt, however, Israelite texts are a late arrival.
John Barton (A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths)
The boy came to know all of Cully's friends through the stories he told. He longed to meet each one, and he always asked about them. "What about Lucky Lefty? Was he with you this season?" "Yep," Cully said. "And he's luckier than ever. One stormy day we were pushing the herd over Barker's Pass. Lucky and I were riding together, and to while away the time, he was telling the story of Noah and his animal ark. He was just to the part about the forty days and forty nights when, out of nowhere, prairie lightning flashed down from a cloud and struck him right on his chest." "Was he hurt bad?" Evan asked. "It knocked him straight off the back of his horse, but he lived. He's got a long scar to show where the lightning hit him...on his left side of course." "Maybe the Lord didn't like the way Lucky was telling the story," Della said with a smile. "I'll warn him about that, ma'am," the cowboy said, smiling back.
Audrey Wood (A Cowboy Christmas: The Miracle at Lone Pine Ridge)
I mentioned on Friday, the church sits and listens to preposterous stories: Mary and the virgin birth, Jesus turning water into wine, Peter getting two gold coins from the mouth of a fish, Moses parting the Red Sea, donkeys talking, the Ark of the Covenant destroying Israel’s enemies, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God, the prophecy of the Messiah’s death as in Isaiah 53, Jonah being swallowed by a whale, the flood of Noah, and on and on it goes. Most of us believe all the stories,
L.A. Marzulli (Days of Chaos: An End Times Handbook)
Do not love, sir, do not love. Woman is a pitfall – a pitfall, a hole, a ditch. Woman is a sharp iron dagger that cuts a man’s throat.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
One Babylonian roué, arraigned before a judge in about 1800 BC, testified, I swear that I did not have intercourse with her, that my penis did not enter her vagina; not, one reflects, the last time someone has got off on that technicality.
Irving Finkel (The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood)
Now, the very legend of Vishnu, that pretends to make him no mere creature, but the supreme and "eternal god," shows that this interpretation of the name is no mere unfounded imagination. Thus is he celebrated in the "Matsya Puran:" "The sun, the wind, the ether, all things incorporeal, were absorbed into his Divine essence; and the universe being consumed, the eternal and omnipotent god, having assumed an ancient form, REPOSED mysteriously upon the surface of that (universal) ocean. But no one is capable of knowing whether that being was then visible or invisible, or what the holy name of that person was, or what the cause of his mysterious SLUMBER. Nor can any one tell how long he thus REPOSED until he conceived the thought of acting; for no one saw him, no one approached him, and no one can penetrate the mystery of his real essence." In conformity with this ancient legend, Vishnu is still represented as sleeping four months every year. Now, connect this story with the name of Noah, the man of "Rest," and with his personal history during the period of the flood, when the world was destroyed, when for forty days and forty nights all was chaos, when neither sun nor moon nor twinkling star appeared, when sea and sky were mingled, and all was one wide universal "ocean," on the bosom of which the patriarch floated, when there was no human being to "approach" him but those who were with him in the ark, and "the mystery of his real essence is penetrated" at once, "the holy name of that person" is ascertained, and his "mysterious slumber" fully accounted for. Now, wherever Noah is celebrated, whether by the name of Saturn, "the hidden one,"--for that name was applied to him as well as to Nimrod, on account of his having been "hidden" in the ark, in the "day of the Lord's fierce anger,"--or, "Oannes," or "Janus," the "Man of the Sea," he is generally described in such a way as shows that he was looked upon as Diphues, "twice-born," or "regenerate
Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons)
The most learned explorers of Egyptian antiquities, including Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, admit that the story of Noah was mixed up with the story of Osiris. The ship of Isis, and the coffin of Osiris, floating on the waters, point distinctly to that remarkable event. There were different periods, in different places in Egypt, when the fate of Osiris was lamented; and at one time there was more special reference to the personal history of "the mighty hunter before the Lord," and at another to the awful catastrophe through which Noah passed. In the great and solemn festival called "The Disappearance of Osiris," it is evident that it is Noah himself who was then supposed to have been lost. The time when Osiris was "shut up in his coffin," and when that coffin was set afloat on the waters, as stated by Plutarch, agrees exactly with the period when Noah entered the ark.
Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons)
Sempre vos ouço dizer que o Amor é cego, no sentido de que ele não consegue ver defeitos no amado. Essa espécie de cegueira é o máximo da visão. Pudésseis vós ser sempre tão cegos que não notásseis defeitos em coisa alguma. Não! Claro e penetrante é o olho do Amor, por isso ele não vê defeitos. Quando o Amor houver purgado vossa visão, não vereis nada que não seja digno de vosso amor. Somente um olho defeituoso e podado de Amor está sempre ocupado em encontrar defeitos, e quaisquer faltas que encontre, são somente as suas próprias.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Men say, “I don’t believe in the story of the flood.” Christ connected His own return to this world with that flood: “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” I believe the story of the flood just as much as I do the third chapter of John. I pity any man that is picking the old Book to pieces. The moment that we give up any one of these things, we touch the deity of the Son of God. I
Dwight L. Moody (The Overcoming Life and Other Sermons)
Given the number of species in the world, aren't there others who want to get high, or stoned, or drunk? This question set him on a path that would take twenty-five years of his life, studying the drug-taking habits of animals from the mongooses of Hawaii to the elephants of South Africa to the grasshoppers of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. It was such an implausible mission that in one marijuana field in Hawaii, he was taken hostage by the local drug dealers, because when he told them he was there to see what happened when mongooses ate marijuana, they thought it was the worst police cover story they ever heard. What Ronald K. Siegel discovered seems strange at first. Noah's Ark, he found, would have looked a lot like London on a Saturday night.
Johann Hari (Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs)
If you would truly govern men, dive to their utmost depths. For men are more than foaming waves. But to dive to the utmost depts of men, you must first dive to your own utmost depth.
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
Flood legends are an excellent confirmation of what we expected to find in a biblical worldview. Consider the converse. In an evolutionary story with millions of years where there was supposedly no global flood, there shouldn’t be any global flood stories. So why would anyone have a massive global flood account in their history?
Ken Ham (A Flood of Evidence: 40 Reasons Noah and the Ark Still Matter)