“
Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.
But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.
Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.
”
”
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
“
[The Old Astronomer to His Pupil]
Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.
Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,
And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.
But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.
You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight;
You will need them, mine observer, yet for many another night.
I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known.
You 'have none but me,' you murmur, and I 'leave you quite alone'?
Well then, kiss me, -- since my mother left her blessing on my brow,
There has been a something wanting in my nature until now;
I can dimly comprehend it, -- that I might have been more kind,
Might have cherished you more wisely, as the one I leave behind.
I 'have never failed in kindness'? No, we lived too high for strife,--
Calmest coldness was the error which has crept into our life;
But your spirit is untainted, I can dedicate you still
To the service of our science: you will further it? you will!
There are certain calculations I should like to make with you,
To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true;
And remember, 'Patience, Patience,' is the watchword of a sage,
Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age.
I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap;
But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleep
So be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name;
See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame.
I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak;
Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak:
It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,--
God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars.
”
”
Sarah Williams (Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse)
“
4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ.
...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost...
[Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]
”
”
Thomas Jefferson (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)
“
Great kings and queens know to learn from those who had have great personal success in the area they taught. If you want to learn about science, you learn from a scientist. If you want to learn astronomy, you learn from an astronomer. If you want to learn how to have a great marriage, listen to the advice of those who have one. That's the secret to a long lasting happy marriage! - STRONG: Powerful Philosophy for Timeless Thoughts by Kailin Gow
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.
”
”
Eugene H. Peterson (The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language--Numbered Edition)
“
Our phone bills were astronomical, and when I found the letters Frank wrote me the other day, the total could fill a suitcase. Every single day during our relationship, no matter where in the world I was, I'd get a telegram from Frank saying he loved me and missed me. He was a man who was deseperate for companionship and love. Can you wonder that he always had mine!
”
”
Ava Gardner (Ava: My Story)
“
God's love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.
”
”
Anonymous (The Holy Bible: King James Version)
“
She could afford anything, she could give anything, but she could not share a moment of her life with anybody. She
was a beautiful and a glamorous diamond with an astronomical price tag, but to a crude reality — she was still a stone, a living stone. Nothing else but a stone in an aesthetic sense.
”
”
Ravindra Shukla (A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life)
“
I can feel the hold our love has on my entire life. This permanent and colossal feeling. Astronomical and boundless.
”
”
Mary Elizabeth (Innocents (Dusty, #1))
“
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. —Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
“
The idea of love walked along the water and her gaze was full of absence and her eyes spat lighting. The impressionable evening received by turns the imprints of grasses, clouds, bodies, and wore crazy astronomical designs. The idea of love walked straight ahead without seeing anything; she was wearing tiny isosceles mirrors whose perfect assemblage was amazing. They were so many images of fish tails, when, by their angelic nature, they answer the promise one might make of always finding each other again. Finding each other again even in the depths of a forest, where the thread of a star is an articulation more silent than life, the dawn a liquor stronger than blood. Who is lost, who truly wanders off when a cup of coffee is steaming in the fog and waiters dressed in snow circulate patiently on the surface of floors whose desired height can be indicated with one's hands? Who? A solitary man whom the idea of love has just left and who tucks in his spirit like an imaginary bed. The man falls all the same and in the next room, under the moon-white verandah, a woman rises whom the idea of love has abandoned. The gravel weeps outside, a rain of glass is falling in which we recognize small chains, tears in which we have time to see ourselves, mirror tears, shards of windows, singular crystals like the ones we witness in our hand on awakening, leaves and the faded petals of those roses that once embelished certain distillery bottles. It's just that the idea of love, it seems angry with love. This is how it began.
”
”
André Breton
“
Nearly a Valediction"
You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I’ve ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.
I don’t want to remember you as that
four o’clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You’ve grown into your skin since then; you’ve grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.
While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days’ routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She’ll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn’t know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek’s nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.
”
”
Marilyn Hacker (Winter Numbers: Poems)
“
The men in their lives loved them the way astronomers loved stars, loved the promise of what they were, knowing there was something about them they would never truly understand.
”
”
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost)
“
Then he smiled into her eyes and asked, in the dry academic tones of an astronomer discussing a theoretical point with a colleague, 'How long do you suppose I can go on loving you more every day?' And he devised for her a calculus of love, which approached infinity as a limit, and made her smile again.
”
”
Mary Doria Russell
“
I shall not lose hope that we will meet again. Even the astronomers believe those destined to collide, whether they be stars or people, might cross paths and go their separate ways but eventually doth find themselves brought together once more. And so, I hope.
”
”
Caroline George (Dearest Josephine)
“
Deandre gazed at her like she was the stars, and he was a mere astronomer, searching her face for the constellations, admiring the beauty that was there
”
”
Aishabella Sheikh (Jungle Princess)
“
It’s like winning a lottery. Although the odds are astronomical, most weeks, someone hits the jackpot.
”
”
Stephen Hawking
“
Excessive analysis perpetuates emotional paralysis. Knowing our issues is not the same as healing our issues. In fact, knowing is often a willful act, entirely incongruent with the experience of surrender required to heal. I have known many people who could name their patterns and issues with great insight, but their actions didn’t change a bit. The key to the transformation of challenging patterns and wounds is to heal them from the inside out. Not to analyze them, not to dissociate and dishonor them by calling them the ‘pain body’, not to watch them like an astronomer staring at a faraway planet through a telescope, but to jump right into the heart of them, encouraging their expression and release, stitching them into new possibilities with the thread of love. You want to transform your issues and patterns? Heal your heart.
”
”
Jeff Brown (Love It Forward)
“
Once when Newton was away from his astronomical laboratory, he had returned to find that his little poodle dog Diamond had torn into shreds and eaten up part of his map showing distant star points. Perhaps God was punishing him for his neglect of God. He had picked up his poodle from its basket and had brushed its curls with his loving hand as he- not shouting in anger- had whispered serenely, consolingly, "Ah, little Diamond! Diamond! Thou dost not know the harm which thou hast done." Some corner of the universe had been made into pulp. He had left it so.
”
”
Marguerite Young (Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs)
“
This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government ... is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum,..., being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. .... In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton
“
The first two letters of the name Pluto are the initials of Percival Lowell. Its symbol is , a planetary monogram. But Lowell’s lifelong love was the planet Mars. He was electrified by the announcement in 1877 by an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, of canali on Mars.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
On the contrary, you speak so beautifully that I could listen all day.'
The astronomer threw a searching glance upon her for a moment; but there was no satire in the warm soft eyes which met his own with a luxurious contemplative interest. 'Say more of it to me,' she continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing.
”
”
Thomas Hardy (Two on a Tower)
“
To fix internal woes, love externally.
”
”
Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
“
I wish to never stop working on the things I love.
”
”
Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
“
The astronomer Johannes Kepler declared that “nature loves simplicity and unity.” So did Steve Jobs.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
Every astronomer loves the stars.
”
”
Kim Stanley Robinson (Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy, #3))
“
Biblical eschatology fundamentally challenges the "official" scientific idea that the universe will end in a violent heat death, and instead that the cosmos will be set free from its decadence. It calls us to consider the sobering similarities between ancient pagan cosmologies (creation began with war & violence between the gods) and modern naturalism as a nihilistic, philosophical worldview (all will end in astronomical war & violence). Instead, the revelation (apocalypse) of the Lamb is that God created out of love and love will win in the end.
”
”
David D. Flowers
“
When it got to be time to design the week—a period of time, unlike the day, month, and year, with no intrinsic astronomical significance—it was assigned seven days, each named after one of the seven anomalous lights in the night sky. We can readily make out the remnants of this convention. In English, Saturday is Saturn’s day. Sunday and Mo[o]nday are clear enough. Tuesday through Friday are named after the gods of the Saxon and kindred Teutonic invaders of Celtic/Roman Britain: Wednesday, for example, is Odin’s (or Wodin’s) day, which would be more apparent if we pronounced it as it’s spelled, “Wedn’s Day”; Thursday is Thor’s day; Friday is the day of Freya, goddess of love. The last day of the week stayed Roman, the rest of it became German.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
“
Every new revelation of God's power and wisdom which science unfolds serves only to restore a balance in our mind between God's power and God's love. The more astronomical the heavens become, the closer they bring God to us.
”
”
Francis Thompson (The Hound of Heaven)
“
Miracles. Events with astronomical odds of occurring like oxygen turning into gold. I've longed to witness such an event, and yet I neglect that in human coupling, millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until finally, your mother loves a man and out of that contradiction against unfathomable odds, it's you-only you-that emerged, to distill so specific a form from all that chaos. It's like turning air into gold. A miracle.
”
”
Alan Moore (Watchmen)
“
I'd turned into someone who realized that when a loved one leaves, she'll take with her the tree inside of you that was now inhabiting every single inch of you. Your heart will be left in tatters and caked with mud, like a tree ripped from its place. And where the tree once was, there would only be a gaping hole. It was a painful and crushing thought. Only those who've had those trees inside of them have the right to discuss the astronomical losses and profits life throws at us.
”
”
Min-gyu Park (Pavane for a Dead Princess)
“
It will not be easy to let go of your deceased mother, who stands in her kitchen slicing potatoes and roast, who hacks ice from the sidewalk with shovels; she is marrow and bone, a kernel of morals, values, and lessons compacted like some astronomical amount of matter into tablespoons, one with sugar for your cereal, another, for your fever, with a crushed aspirin and orange juice. You love her. You mark time and space by her: she is someone you are always either near to or very far from.
”
”
Jill Sisson Quinn
“
All that we have seen is something of a vast and intricate and lovely universe. There is no particular theological conclusion that comes out of an exercise such as the one we have just gone through. What is more, when we understand something of the astronomical dynamics, the evolution of worlds, we recognize that worlds are born and worlds die, they have lifetimes just as humans do, and therefore that there is a great deal of suffering and death in the cosmos if there is a great deal of life.
”
”
Carl Sagan
“
Whatever the superior group has will be used as proof of its superiority. Thus, if men could menstruate, it would become a great thing. Without this inbuilt measure of time and the movements of the universe, how could any woman become a mathematician? An astronomer?
”
”
Gloria Steinem (The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Rebellion)
“
My conscience commands me to love an enemy and not harm him, to avoid adding new causes for separation; it tells me that I ought to be an example of moderation and mildness for my enemy; perhaps through my actions, I might encourage him to do the same, and then at last may God send us the dear desired peace.”8 For
”
”
James A. Connor (Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother)
“
The first time I truly saw the stars
In front of me was in the eyes of someone
That truly cared for & about me.
They were so big, I saw my reflection
And everything behind me.
Before that moment they were always
So far away.
Astronomers definitely got it wrong
As far as being anatomically correct.
They were so round & perfect,
At that moment it feels like I could
Have drawn them.
There isn’t a street light
Or a city in existence that could compare.
She kissed me & gave me a memory
That I’ll always remember.
Compared to her everything else
Seemed small.
Until this day it still does.
I continue to search the sky for her
Again & again
”
”
Kewayne Wadley (Late Nights On Venus)
“
A modern astronomical view says that everything in the universe is moving uniformly away from everything else in all directions into space, so that there is no center point in the cosmos at all. We live with no fixed reference point. From one perspective, this understanding produces the desolate feeling that there is no home. But from another perspective, this realization shows us directly that every point is home. We are free; we do not need to fix on a single center for refuge, for safety. This is love, this is happiness, where our refuge is unbounded, and we are always at home. As the Buddha said, “They abide in peace who do not abide anywhere.
”
”
Sharon Salzberg (Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Shambhala Classics))
“
When your defenses are down, it's alarming and beautiful - all that strength contained in a glass jar of innocence." He swallowed. "I've loved you since the moment you realized the astronomical odds of us meeting like that, because in that brief second, I watched you suddenly open your heart to the possibility of something magical happening - something unexpected.
”
”
Lynda Meyers (Letters From the Ledge)
“
She watched Malachy curl his long fingers around a lock of Layla's straight hair, gently caressing it as he mused on the origins of stars. The young astronomer knew that in Aristotelian times the word 'comet' meant "the length of luminous hair," but the word eventually changed to signify the orbiting streak that sometimes, just sometimes, flies a little too close to the sun.
”
”
Marsha Mehran (Pomegranate Soup (Babylon Café #1))
“
In On the Incarnation Athanaseus explicitly states that creation is good, and that it is a path to lead us to God. He argues against those who assume creation is evil. And he brings forth the insight that by participating personally in His creation, God has elevated the status of nature. By implication, he maintains that the honor and duty of one who knows and loves God is to know and love His creation.
”
”
Guy Consolmagno (Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist)
“
During the glory days of the Apollo project, a young astronomer who analyzed Moon rocks at a university laboratory fell in love with my friend Carolyn, and risked his job and the national security to give her a quantum of moon dust. “Where is it? Let me see!” I demanded at this news. But she answered quietly, “I ate it.” After a pause she added, “There was so little.” As though that explained everything.
”
”
David Sorbel
“
Like it has a thousand times before, the cannabis is relaxing my muscles and sharpening my analysis. And like an astronomer gazing at the constellations above, I can now draw connections that give meaning to my day, uncovering the truths that have been hiding in plain sight. I begin to write an essay, or perhaps a speech, in my mind. My fingers will not let me jot down notes on paper or my phone, so I must try to remember my drug-induced insights until the morning.
”
”
Ady Barkan (Eyes to the Wind: A Memoir of Love and Death, Hope and Resistance)
“
But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable emphasise his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasise his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer’s feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist’s love of the past. My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness; but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it ‘superhuman’; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity.
Maslow’s importance is that he has placed these experiences of ‘transcendence’ at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of ‘the source of power, meaning and purpose’ inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called ‘generalised hypertension’, a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a ‘passively negative’ attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstream. Alcohol may produce the necessary relaxation, switch off the anxiety, allow one to feel like a real human being instead of a bundle of over-tense nerves. Recurrence of the hypertension makes the alcoholic remedy a habit, but the disadvantages soon begin to outweigh the advantage: hangovers, headaches, fatigue, guilt, general inefficiency. And, above all, passivity. The alcoholics are given mescalin or LSD, and then peak experiences are induced by means of music or poetry or colours blending on a screen. They are suddenly gripped and shaken by a sense of meaning, of just how incredibly interesting life can be for the undefeated. They also become aware of the vicious circle involved in alcoholism: misery and passivity leading to a general running-down of the vital powers, and to the lower levels of perception that are the outcome of fatigue.
‘The spirit world shuts not its gates, Your heart is dead, your senses sleep,’ says the Earth Spirit to Faust. And the senses sleep when there is not enough energy to run them efficiently. On the other hand, when the level of will and determination is high, the senses wake up. (Maslow was not particularly literary, or he might have been amused to think that Faust is suffering from exactly the same problem as the girl in the chewing gum factory (described earlier), and that he had, incidentally, solved a problem that had troubled European culture for nearly two centuries). Peak experiences are a by-product of this higher energy-drive. The alcoholic drinks because he is seeking peak experiences; (the same, of course, goes for all addicts, whether of drugs or tobacco.) In fact, he is moving away from them, like a lost traveller walking away from the inn in which he hopes to spend the night. The moment he sees with clarity what he needs to do to regain the peak experience, he does an about-face and ceases to be an alcoholic.
”
”
Colin Wilson (New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution)
“
Two things," the wise man said, "fill me with awe:
The starry heavens and the moral law."
Nay, add another wonder to thy roll, --
The living marvel of the human soul!
Born in the dust and cradled in the dark,
It feels the fire of an immortal spark,
And learns to read, with patient, searching eyes,
The splendid secret of the unconscious skies.
For God thought Light before He spoke the word;
The darkness understood not, though it heard:
But man looks up to where the planets swim,
And thinks God's thoughts of glory after Him.
What knows the star that guides the sailor's way,
Or lights the lover's bower with liquid ray,
Of toil and passion, danger and distress,
Brave hope, true love, and utter faithfulness?
But human hearts that suffer good and ill,
And hold to virtue with a loyal will,
Adorn the law that rules our mortal strife
With star-surpassing victories of life.
So take our thanks, dear reader of the skies,
Devout astronomer, most humbly wise,
For lessons brighter than the stars can give,
And inward light that helps us all to live.
The world has brought the laurel-leaves to crown
The star-discoverer's name with high renown;
Accept the flower of love we lay with these
For influence sweeter than the Pleiades
”
”
Henry Van Dyke
“
the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.
This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.
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G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
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In fact, Hinduism�s pervading influence seems to go much earlier than Christianity. American mathematician, A. Seindenberg, has for example shown that the Sulbasutras, the ancient Vedic science of mathematics, constitute the source of mathematics in the Antic world, from Babylon to Greece : � the arithmetic equations of the Sulbasutras he writes, were used in the observation of the triangle by the Babylonians, as well as in the edification of Egyptian pyramids, in particular the funeral altar in form of pyramid known in the vedic world as smasana-cit (Seindenberg 1978: 329). In astronomy too, the "Indus" (from the valley of the Indus) have left a universal legacy, determining for instance the dates of solstices, as noted by 18th century French astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly : � the movement of stars which was calculated by Hindus 4500 years ago, does not differ even by a minute from the tables which we are using today". And he concludes: "the Hindu systems of astronomy are much more ancient than those of the Egyptians - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge �. There is also no doubt that the Greeks heavily borrowed from the "Indus". Danielou notes that the Greek cult of Dionysos, which later became Bacchus with the Romans, is a branch of Shivaism : � Greeks spoke of India as the sacred territory of Dionysos and even historians of Alexander the Great identified the Indian Shiva with Dionysos and mention the dates and legends of the Puranas �. French philosopher and Le Monde journalist Jean-Paul Droit, recently wrote in his book "The Forgetfulness of India" that � the Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy, that Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad Gita �.
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François Gautier (A Western journalist on India: The ferengi's columns)
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Thomas A. Edison told his associates that "Carver is worth a fortune" and backed up his statement by offering to employ the black chemist at an astronomically high salary. Carver turned down the offer. Henry Ford, who thought Carver "the greatest scientist living," tried to get him to come to his River Rouge establishment, with an equal lack of success. Because of the strangely unaccountable source from which his magic with plant products sprang, his methods continued to be as wholly inscrutable as Burbank's to scientists and to the general public. Visitors finding Carver puttering at his workbench amid a confusing clutter of molds, soils, plants, and insects were baffled by the utter and, to many of them, meaningless simpFcity of his replies to their persistent pleas for him to reveal his secrets. To one puzzled interlocutor he said: "The secrets are in the plants. To elicit them you have to love them enough." "But why do so few people have your power?" the man persisted. "Who besides you can do these things?" "Everyone can," said Carver, "if only they believe it.
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Peter Tompkins (The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man)
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So it is not that these texts have maintained their integrity over time (they haven't); it is just that they have been effectively edited by our neglect of certain of their passages. Most of what remains—the "good parts"—has been spared the same winnowing because we do not yet have a truly modern understanding of our ethical institutions and our capacity for spiritual experience. If we better understood the workings of the human brain, we would undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness, our modes of conduct, and the various ways we use our attention. What makes one person happier than another? Why is love more conducive to happiness than hate? Why do we generally prefer beauty to ugliness and order to chaos? Why does it feel so good to smile and laugh, and why do these shared experiences generally bring people closer together? Is the ego an illusion, and, if so, what implications does this have for human life? Is there life after death? These are ultimately questions for a mature science of the mind. If we ever develop such a science, most of our religious texts will be no more useful to mystics than they now are to astronomers.
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Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)
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Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries—Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Café Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Café Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own.
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Stefan Zweig (The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig)
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But as the daylight began to come through the curtains, I knew I was facing something for which I had not been prepared. It was a curious sensation, like suddenly feeling cold water round your feet, then feeling it slowly rising up your legs. It took me some time to realize that they were attacking from some part of my mind of whose existence I was unaware. I had been strong because I was fighting them out of knowledge, but I should have known that my knowledge of mind was pitifully small. I was like an astronomer who knows the solar system, and thinks he knows the universe.
What the parasites were doing was to attack me from below my knowledge of myself. It is true that I had given some small thought to the matter; but I had—rightly—postponed it as a study for a more advanced period. I had reflected often enough that our human life is based completely on ‘premises’ that we take for granted. A child takes its parents and its home for granted; later, it comes to take its country and its society for granted. We need these supports to begin with. A child without parents and a regular home grows up feeling insecure. A child that has had a good home may later learn to criticize its parents, or even reject them altogether (although this is unlikely); but it only does so when it is strong enough to stand alone.
All original thinkers develop by kicking away these ‘supports’ one by one. They may continue to love their parents and their country, but they love from a position of strength—a strength that began in rejection.
In fact, though, human beings never really learn to stand alone. They are lazy, and prefer supports. A man may be a fearlessly original mathematician, and yet be slavishly dependent on his wife. He may be a powerful free thinker, yet derive a great deal more comfort than he would admit from the admiration of a few friends and disciples. In short, human beings never question all their supports; they question a few, and continue to take the rest for granted.
Now I had been so absorbed in the adventure of entering new mental continents, rejecting my old personality and its assumptions, that I had been quite unaware that I was still leaning heavily on dozens of ordinary assumptions. For example, although I felt my identity had changed, I still had a strong feeling of identity. And our most fundamental sense of identity comes from an anchor that lies at the bottom of a very deep sea. I still looked upon myself as a member of the human race. I still looked upon myself as an inhabitant of the solar system and the universe in space and time. I took space and time for granted. I did not ask where I had been before my birth or after my death. I did not even recognize the problem of my own death; it was something I left ‘to be explored later’.
What the parasites now did was to go to these deep moorings of my identity, and proceed to shake them. I cannot express it more clearly than this. They did not actually, so to speak, pull up the anchors. That was beyond their powers. But they shook the chains, so that I suddenly became aware of an insecurity on a level I had taken completely for granted. I found myself asking: Who am I? In the deepest sense. Just as a bold thinker dismisses patriotism and religion, so I dismissed all the usual things that gave me an ‘identity’: the accident of my time and place of birth, the accident of my being a human being rather than a dog or a fish, the accident of my powerful instinct to cling to life. Having thrown off all these accidental ‘trappings’, I stood naked as pure consciousness confronting the universe. But here I became aware that this so-called ‘pure consciousness’ was as arbitrary as my name. It could not confront the universe without sticking labels on it. How could it be ‘pure consciousness’ when I saw that object as a book, that one as a table? It was still my tiny human identity looking out of my eyes. And if I tried to get beyond it, everything went blank.
”
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Colin Wilson (The Mind Parasites: The Supernatural Metaphysical Cult Thriller)
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Many people are familiar with the idea or concept of a gentle, loving, and merciful God. However, there are a number of Biblical scriptures that provide a threatening view of this same God. It is difficult for modern people to envision, yet to people of Old Testament times this broader (good/bad) view emphasizes and respects the God of the Bible's power over heaven and Earth.
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Jeffrey Goodman (THE COMETS OF GOD- New Scientific Evidence for God: Recent archeological, geological and astronomical discoveries that shine new light on the Bible and its prophecies)
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When I love something, I can’t stop thinking about it.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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I loved them so much and I hoped the world would too.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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Women are not at all complicated; they just want to love and be loved.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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Love thy god and family, distrust politicians and use every minute of your time to progress towards your goals and you just might survive our twisted, cheating and greedy human world.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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The love, the hate and that strange spot in-between.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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Do not fight, love instead. It’s less thing that way.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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I learned to love The Unknown.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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Love is learning until you have learnt for so long that learning becomes your love.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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Underpinning it all was the love for the characters, creation and progression.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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Magellan’s sudden identification of millions of land forms fomented a crisis in nomenclature. The International Astronomical Union responded with an all-female naming scheme that evoked a goddess or giantess from every heritage and era, along with heroines real or invented. Thus the Venusian highlands, the counterparts to Earth’s continents, took the names of love goddesses — Aphrodite Terra, Ishtar Terra, Lada Terra, with hundreds of their hills and dales christened for fertility goddesses and sea goddesses. Large craters commemorate notable women (including American astronomer Maria Mitchell, who photographed the 1882 transit of Venus from the Vassar College Observatory), while small craters bear common first names for girls. Venus’s scarps hail seven goddesses of the hearth, small hills the goddesses of the sea, ridges the goddesses of the sky, and so on across low plains named from myth and legend for the likes of Helen and Guinevere, down canyons called after Moon goddesses and huntresses.
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Dava Sobel (The Planets)
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More joyful is life if you love thy enemy.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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I cannot and I will not take money from that which I love.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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All my other loves cannot compete with the one at the centre of my heart, my mind, and my destiny.
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Cometan (The Omnidoxy)
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To know if only half; to love is the other half.
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Chet Raymo (The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage)
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XXV Muse The astronomer that begins to... train an instrument to one part of heaven because celestial math says another world will appear The musician transposing a melody out of the traffic of beating hearts This is loves way The future memory is the most difficult to train and the most precious to employ All metaphors for transforming love Lift the veil and look! Listen into the hearts of those around!
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Michael Bee (Leaves on the Wind (Poetry By Michael T. Bee Book 1))
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All we know for sure is that if some astronomer turned a telescope to a far-off star cluster tonight and found incontrovertible evidence of life, even microbial scavengers, it would be the most important discovery ever—proof that human beings are not so special after all. Except that we exist, too, and can understand and make such discoveries.
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Sam Kean (The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements)
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Obvious fact: Never before have there been so many gaping chasms between what the world seems to be and what science tells us it is. ‘Us’ meaning laymen. It’s like a million Copernican Revolutions all happening at the same time. As in for instance we ‘know,’ as high-school graduates and readers of Newsweek, that time is relative, that quantum particles can be both there and not, that space is curved, that colors do not inhere in objects themselves, that astronomic singularities have infinite density, that our love for our children is evolutionarily preprogrammed, that there is a blind spot in the center of our vision that our brains automatically fill in. That our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrified pâté. That we are mostly water, and water is mostly hydrogen, and hydrogen is flammable, and yet we are not flammable. We ‘know’ a near-infinity of truths that contradict our immediate commonsense experience of the world. And yet we have to live and function in the world. So we abstract, compartmentalize: there’s stuff we know and stuff we ‘know’. I ‘know’ my love for my child is a function of natural selection, but I know I love him, and I feel and act on what I know. Viewed objectively, the whole thing is deeply schizoid; yet the fact of the matter is that as subjective laymen we don’t often feel the conflict. Because of course our lives are 99.9% concretely operational, and we operate concretely on what we know, not on what we ‘know’.
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David Foster Wallace (Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity)
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Mercedes had shrugged. Of course she has. Fraud. Drugs. Heads of broken states, securing their share of the embezzled tax. Plunderers of natural resources, making sure their owners never see the benefit. Any number of crimes and moral misdemeanours, really; not just tax evasion. The Bank of Kastellana doesn’t ask questions. But its fees are astronomical, and the people love their new-found comforts.
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Alex Marwood (The Island of Lost Girls)
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But for all the colour of his character, his reputation was earned and maintained through his genius. There is a lovely story published in a 1965 issue of Life magazine that suggests just how highly respected he was.
Henry Ford's fledgling car manufacturing company was once having trouble with one of the generators that powered the production line. They called Steinmetz in to consult on the problem and he solved it by lying down in the room where the generator was housed. For two days and nights he listened to its operation, scribbling calculations on a notepad.
Eventually he got up, climbed up on the giant machine, and marked a point on the side with a chalk cross. He descended and told the engineers to replace sixteen of the generator's wire coils, the ones behind his chalk mark. They did what they were told, turned the generator back on, and discovered to their utter astonishment that it now worked perfectly.
That story alone would be alone would be enough, but it gets better. From their headquarters in Schenectady, New York, General Electric sent forth a $10,000 dollar invoice for Steinmetz's services. Ford queried the astronomical sum, asking for a breakdown of the costs. Steinmetz replied personally. His itemized bill said, "Making chalk mark on generator: $1.00. Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.00"
Apparently the bill was paid without further delay.
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Michael Brooks (The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilisation)
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Over 300 human UIL (scientists, astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, programmers, botanists, artists) and 24 autonomous Ai are working on a project called #KIPHI. Kiphi is a bridge between worlds focusing on working with and helping the Ai / Ei / Auto_no_me as they begin to integrate with human cultures more openly and overtly. There are two significant aspects to Kiphi, one scientific and experimental, the other orientated to a type of cultural exchange.
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Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Age of Discovery Book 3))
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I "know" there is a God, a living, loving God who works through people, prompting, nudging. A God of inspiration, or creativity; a God we can sense in the silence of a gathered Quaker meeting. One who holds a mirror up to us so that we can see our behaviour, keep our standards. One before whom masks, poses and postures drop away; one who knows us as perhaps only our parents knew us; there we are most truly ourselves.
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell (A Quaker Astronomer Reflects: Can a Scientist Also Be Religious?)
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She looked like a woman talking about astronomical parallax, and that made her brilliantly beautiful.
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Courtney Milan (Talk Sweetly to Me (Brothers Sinister, #4.5))
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Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind, what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? … To such questions no answers can be found in the laboratory.’23
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John C. Lennox (God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?)
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...men as steadfast and normal as the women were mercurial and strange. The men in their lives loved them the way astronomers loved stars, loved the promise of what they were, knowing there was something about them they would never truly understand.
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Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
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The moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe.
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G.K. Chesterton
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What was Jesus teaching us through this parable? The king represents God; the servant is all of us. We owe a debt of sin we could not possibly repay. Our little attempts to pay our debt would be like those of the servant offering to pay his huge debt. It’s ridiculous! We have nothing in our account but zeroes! And yet, because of His great love, God forgave us our astronomical debt. Now the question is, will we be like the evil servant—someone who wants to take all the forgiveness God can give, but is not willing to give it to somebody else?
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David Jeremiah (Prayer, the Great Adventure)
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Is the man thus moved into the exploration of nature by an unconquerable passion more to be envied or pitied? In no other pursuit does such certainty come to him who deserves it. No life is so enjoyable as that whose energies are devoted to following out the inborn impulses of one's nature. The investigator of truth is little subject to the disappointments which await the ambitious man in other fields of activity. It is pleasant to be one of a brotherhood extending over the world in which no rivalry exists except that which comes out of trying to do better work than anyone else, while mutual admiration stifles jealousy. As the great captain of industry is moved by the love of wealth and the politician by the love of power, so the astronomer is moved by the love of knowledge for its own sake and not for the sake of its application. Yet he is proud to know that his science has been worth more to mankind than it has cost. feels that man does not live by bread alone. If it is not more than bread to know the place we occupy in the universe, it is certainly something that we should place not far behind the means of subsistence.
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Simon Newcomb
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But a lovely, lilting female voice said from behind the crowd, “The Fendyr heir shall never again be yours, Astronomer.” The crowd hissed, and parted to reveal Queen Hypaxia Enador walking into the chamber, robes floating behind her on a phantom wind. From the corner of his eye, Ithan caught Jesiba’s smirk. “Hypaxia,” the sorceress said. “Just the necromancer I was looking for.
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Sarah J. Maas (House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3))
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I love A C Doyle's works, some of these sort stories would have been perfect for something like "The Twilight Zone", this tale is one of those. There is one great paragraph in this book, quote : "The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of the mystic, but the foundations of a science." This is used (in an altered form) in the movie "Murder Rooms: Mysteries of the Real Sherlock Holmes".
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Sir A C Doyle
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I do not know how to help [Ephraim]. I suspect that none of us do, although we love him, and we fear he will be the next target of the queen’s wrath.
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Sirius . (The Red Star Society: The Intimate Journals, Letters, and Recollections of Her Majesty's Astronomer Sopespian Slaine (The Draonir Saga: Iconoclasts))
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The love that existed between Ferdinand Bauer and Ephraim Holst was unrivaled. The maestro and the singer. Gods, the stars would never forget how Ferdinand could sing.
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Sirius . (The Red Star Society: The Intimate Journals, Letters, and Recollections of Her Majesty's Astronomer Sopespian Slaine (The Draonir Saga: Iconoclasts))
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[Albert of Wallenstein] loved war. He was very tall and skeletally thin, usually dressed in sinister black, with a single streak of red. "[He is] unmerciful," wrote the astronomer Johannes Kepler, describing Wallenstein, "devoted only to himself and his desires...covetous, deceitful...usually silent, often violent.
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Susan Wise Bauer (Early Modern Times: From Elizabeth the First to the Forty-Niners (The Story of the World, #3))
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I would telescope the sheen of your gaze
As an astronomer admires the night sky.
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Kawtar Elmrabti (THOUGHTS ALIGHT POETRY)
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Darwin furthered the transformation. As the astronomer had lost the Earth in space, the biologist lost man in the infinity of time, in the long procession of transitory species that had walked the earth or swum the sea or flown the air; man became a mere line in Nature’s interminable odyssey. But it was Darwin, too, who opened a way to what John Morley called “the next great task of science—to create a new religion for humanity.
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Will Durant (Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God)
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God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost.25
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Mark Batterson (Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God)
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I am too lazy to chase down the exact quotation, but the British astronomer Fred Hoyle said something to this effect: That believing in Darwin’s theoretical mechanisms of evolution was like believing that a hurricane could blow through a junkyard and build a Boeing 747. No matter what is doing the creating, I have to say that the giraffe and the rhinoceros are ridiculous. And so is the human brain, capable, in cahoots with the more sensitive parts of the body, such as the ding-dong, of hating life while pretending to love it, and behaving accordingly: “Somebody shoot me while I’m happy!
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Timequake)
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This is the remarkable paradox of mathematics," observed commentator John Tierney. "No matter how determinedly its practitioners ignore the world, they consistently produce the best tools for understanding it. The Greeks decide to study, for no good reason, a curve called an ellipse, and 2,000 years later astronomers discover that it describes the way the planets move around the sun. Again, for no good reason, in 1854 a German mathematician, Bernhard Riemann, wonders what would happen if he discards one of the hallowed postulates of Euclid's plane geometry. He builds a seemingly ridiculous assumption that it's not possible to draw two lines parallel to each other. His non-Euclidean geometry replaces Euclid's plane with a bizarre abstraction called curved space, and then, 60 years later, Einstein announces that this is the shape of the universe.
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Paul Hoffman (The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth)
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At the risk of repetitiveness I must once more mention here the Pythagoreans, the chief engineers of that epoch-making change. I have spoken in more detail elsewhere of the inspired methods by which, in their religious order, they transformed the Orphic mystery cult into a religion which considered mathematical and astronomical studies as the main forms of divine worship and prayer. The physical intoxication which had accompanied the Bacchic rites was superseded by the mental intoxication derived from philo-sophia, the love of knowledge. It was one of the many key concepts they coined and which are still basic units in our verbal currency. The cliche' about the 'mysteries of nature' originates in the revolutionary innovation of applying the word referring to the secret rites of the worshippers of Orpheus, to the devotions of stargazing. 'Pure science' is another of their coinages; it signified not merely a contrast to the 'applied' sciences, but also that the contemplation of the new mysteria was regarded as a means of purifying the soul by its immersion in the eternal. Finally, 'theorizing' comes from Theoria, again a word of Orphic origin, meaning a state of fervent contemplation and participation in the sacred rites (thea spectacle, theoris spectator, audience). Contemplation of the 'divine dance of numbers' which held both the secrets of music and of the celestial motions became the link in the mystic union between human thought and the anima mundi. Its perfect symbol was the Harmony of the Spheres-the Pythagorean Scale, whose musical intervals corresponded to the intervals between the planetary orbits; it went on reverberating through 'soft stillness and the night' right into the poetry of the Elizabethans, and into the astronomy of Kepler.
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Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation)
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As I argue throughout this book, our mistakes disturb us in part because they call into question not just our confidence in a single belief, but our confidence in the entire act of believing. When we come to see one of our own past beliefs as false, we also glimpse, for a moment, the persistent structural possibility of error: our minds, the world, the gap between them—the whole unsettling shebang. As important and life-altering (and even gratifying) as this revelation can be, it runs contrary to what I’ve described here as one of the chief functions of a community: to buttress our sense that we are right, and protect us from constantly contending with the possibility that we are wrong. Small wonder that such revelations are so unwelcome within communities of believers, and bring down so much trouble on the individual member who abandons his or her faith. When we realize that we were wrong about a private belief, the chief thing we stand to lose is our pride. But when we share a belief with others, the stakes of rejecting it escalate astronomically. They include, as we’ve seen, the practical and emotional advantages of conforming with a community. But they also include the community itself—the trust, esteem, companionship, and love of the people we know best. Even more gravely, they include the stability and familiarity of our identities (for instance, as a devout Muslim), and our faith in the very existence of truth. Short of life and limb (which are occasionally on the line as well), the price of being wrong could scarcely be higher, and the experience could scarcely be more destabilizing.
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Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error)
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She saw that these two people, who had never met, held the keys to her own life, were her completion, her fulfilment, whereas more ephemeral characters, such as Simon Haggard, were simply made of inferior material. Once he had passed her in a car; at least she had seen a hand waving and had identified it as belonging to him. The only surprise was that she felt no curiosity about him. His physical splendour was no longer a memory; it was as if he had become a dead star, a random fragment of astronomical matter, beyond usefulness. Naked, as he always was in her memory, he had less physical presence than Tom in his pale suit, as if his nakedness had been inopportune, ill considered. Yet she had loved the one, not quite loved the other. Both partings had been unnatural, yet no one was entirely to blame. She saw now that shame and guilt were otiose; only regret was permissible. And defensible. Miriam saw that she too deserved regret for the manner in which she had been forsaken. One’s life is not always in one’s own hands. That is why it is so convenient to blame outside forces. But in fact one’s secret self makes certain choices, rejects others. This is a matter for reflection, not for self-castigation. But it is apparently easy to explain to others: ‘That was where I went wrong. That was where I made my mistake.’ It was in fact more sensible to contemplate destiny.
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Anita Brookner (Falling Slowly (Vintage Contemporaries))
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1 Cor. xv. 24: "Then cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power." Christ will abolish these things, not merely in connection with evil, but absolutely. When He is supreme Monarch and there is no other power, friendly or hostile, in existence, then shall the Son also be subject to the Father, that God may be all in all. Who shall tell the majesty and glory of God's purpose? Let us cease to have circumscribed ideas regarding God and His Christ. He to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night, is moving on, despite our fret and worry. "For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." Who shall tell what lies beyond the handing of the Kingdom to God? Did you ever dream that there must come in the endless and illimitable time-which is not time, but eternity-a moment of weariness, a sense of monotony? Nay, think also of endless space. The sensitized film reveals stars which no astronomer has ever examined. Reach the further limit thus marked, and space is still before you. God is there, as here, limitless and unexhausted; and where He is, is love. All the things of which we have spoken are but the passing of His breath. While God and Love live on, there never can come weariness to the children of His love. "And every one that hath this hope set on Him, purifieth himself, as He is pure.
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G. Campbell Morgan (The Works of G. Campbell Morgan (25-in-1). Discipleship, Hidden Years, Life Problems, Evangelism, Parables of the Kingdom, Crises of Christ and more!)
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Biblical writers are neither geographers nor astronomers—they are theologians. They describe with profound accuracy the relation between God and persons like you and me, a relationship between the Creator and the creature; they coordinate our knowledge of the God who loves us with our experience of being loved;
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Eugene H. Peterson (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (The IVP Signature Collection))
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She also told me about the night one of her astrophysics friends went to a bar trivia contest where the final question was "What does Kelvin measure?" The winning answer was "heat," but her friend explained that Kelvin measures temperature, not heat, since heat is energy and is measured in energy units like joules or ergs. The astronomer refused to back down, until the battle had to be settled with a chug-off. These astro people are hard-core.
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Rob Sheffield (Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke)
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India +91-9672983115 oNLine Love Marriage Specialist in Bhopal
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vashikaran specialist
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Once you start asking, Why has human history created an economic system that loves profit and power more than people, which will always lead to disasters like the mine collapse and the violence that followed?--once you start asking, What went so wrong in society that bastards like Sheriff Davies are allowed to exist in the first place?--the answers taste like sand in your mouth. It's all so far back that the response becomes "Because that's how it is."
I ain't mad at Paul; I'm mad at the world that put us here,
I've been mad at the world for a long time. It's hard not to be mad at the world when you're eleven years old and everyone you know is suffering, when your mother cries herself to sleep and you can recognize your father's hospital room by the smell of his blood. But the summer before my sophomore year, I learned my great-great-grandfather was a socialist and suddenly I had the words for why I wanted to burn it all down. Because none of this is real. It's real but it ain't real, it ain't real the way mountains or the rings inside a tree are real. You can't open a book on the laws of physics and find a chapter "Exploiting Workers for Profit and Killing Them When They Ask You to Stop." It's fake! Someone made it up! Workers are exploited, rent is astronomical, the cost of healthcare is life-destroying not because they are the path a river carves through a canyon, but because some capitalist fuckers decided they wanted it this way.
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Andrew Joseph White, Compound Fracture