β
One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
β
β
Daniel J. Boorstin
β
Quiet people have the loudest minds.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
And there's nothing wrong with being a lizard either. Unless you were born to be a hawk.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
β
Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?"
Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.
β
β
Gabriel F.W. Koch (Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence)
β
Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.
βThe Creation of Γa
β
β
Ursula K. Le Guin
β
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.
β
β
Ethan Hawke (The Hottest State)
β
You're an absolutely stunning, murderous little creature.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash, #1))
β
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."
[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Either you have the feeling or you don't. Hawk Davies
β
β
Daniel Handler (Why We Broke Up)
β
Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."
"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me.
"Moderately," Holly confessed....Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.
β
β
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffanyβs and Three Stories)
β
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays)
β
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Illustrated Shakespeare (RHUK) Editions: Hamlet)
β
One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn't exist.....Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
It matters that you don't just give up.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
The universe doesn't allow perfection.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
Youβre such a bad influence,β I murmured as I placed my hand in his.
Hawke curled his fingers around mine. The weight and warmth of his hand was a pleasant shock. βOnly the bad can be influenced, Princess.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash, #1))
β
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
I fell for you when you were Hawke, and I kept falling for you when you became Casteel.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire (Blood and Ash, #2))
β
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy, #1))
β
If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (Sigan Ε¬n Hangsang Mirae Ro HΕrΕnΕnΚΌga: HokΚ»ing Paksa Ε¬i Chaemi InnΕn ChΚ»oesin Ujuron)
β
I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Henry V)
β
When you listen to me, I think the stars will fall.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash, #1))
β
People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Don't call me baby when you're pissed, Sweet Pea."
"Don't call me Sweet Pea at all, baby
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Mystery Man (Dream Man, #1))
β
The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder
β
β
Jodi Picoult (Keeping Faith)
β
Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
β
β
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
β
For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
I thought it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all.
β
β
Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
β
Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?
β
β
Voltaire (Candide)
β
The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Not only does God play dice but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
love is a hawk with velvet claws
love is a rock with heart and veins
love is a lion with satin jaws
love is a storm with silken reins
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
β
She blew out a breath between gritted teeth. βSometimes I really want toββa frustrated soundββbite you!β
He froze. βI might let you.β
βI wonβt do it if youβd enjoy it.
β
β
Nalini Singh (Kiss of Snow (Psy-Changeling, #10))
β
If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself.
β
β
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
β
I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
A crow may put on human shape or crow shape, but we remain crows,β he replied firmly. βHawks, too, are the same, whether they are born in human nests or hawk ones. The nestlings must always be protected. Since you have chosen to protect these, I and mine will protect you.
β
β
Tamora Pierce (Trickster's Choice (Daughter of the Lioness, #1))
β
My jaw dropped open. βHoly crowsβ¦β
βThereβs a couple of eagles mixed in there,β Luke commented.
"And a few hawks,β Aiden added.
I rolled my eyes. βOkay. Holy birds of prey! Is that better?β
βMuch,β Aiden murmured.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Sentinel (Covenant, #5))
β
You have the power to tear me to pieces, to wound me so deep and true that I'll never recover. What Rissa's death did to the boy I was? You have the ability to do a thousand times worse to the man I've become.
β
β
Nalini Singh (Kiss of Snow (Psy-Changeling, #10))
β
There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, [...]
β
β
Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk)
β
Who am I? the monster repeated, still roaring. I am the spine that the mountains hang upon! I am the tears that the rivers cry! I am the lungs that breathe the wind! I am the wolf that kills the stag, the hawk that kills the mouse, the spider that kills the fly! I am the stag, the mouse and the fly that are eaten! I am the snake of the world devouring its tail! I am everything untamed and untameable! It brought Conor up close to its eye. I am thils wild earth, come for you, Conor O'Malley.
"You look like a tree," Conor said.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
So . . . what is this fire river called?β
βThe Phlegethon,β [Annabeth] said. βYou should concentrate on going down.β
βThe Phlegethon?β [Percy] shinnied along the ledge. Theyβd made it roughly a third of the way down the cliffβstill high enough up to die if they fell. βSounds like a marathon for hawking spitballs.β
βPlease donβt make me laugh,β she said.
βJust trying to keep things light.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4))
β
He's not-" Daniel started to say. He watched a red-tailed hawk land in an oak tree over their heads. "He's not good enough for you."
Luce had heard people say that line a thousand times before. It was what everyone always said. Not good enough. But when the words passed Daniel's lips, they sounded important, even somehow true and relevant, not vague and dismissive the way the phrase had always sounded to her in the past.
"Well, then," she said in a quiet voice, "who is?"
Daniel put his hands on his hips. He laughed to himself for a long time. "I don't know," he said finally. "That's a terrific question."
Not exactly the answer Luce was looking for. "It's not like it's that hard," she said, stuffing her hands into her pockets because she wanted to reach out for him. "To be good enough for me."
Daniel's eyes looked like they were falling, all the violet that had been in them a moment before turned a deep, dark gray. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it is.
β
β
Lauren Kate
β
Does any part of you still look at the sky and hurt?
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy, #1))
β
You're bossy, arrogant, intrusive, annoying... "
His minor grin amplified.
See! Totally unrepentant...
"Do I have anything going for me?"
"... you can be sweet, you're a cuddler, and you carried me out of a burning building..."
"I'm a cuddler?"
"You spoon."
His brows went up. "That's important enough to be on your list?"
"Uh... yeah."
[He's grinning] "Fuckin' ridiculous what women think is important.
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Mystery Man (Dream Man, #1))
β
Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
32. I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
They do not make me sick discussiong their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.
52. The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.
β
β
Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)
β
I regard the afterlife to be a fairy story for people that are afraid of the dark
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
We carry the lives we've imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost.
β
β
Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk)
β
Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
β
Arianne had her feet up on the table, wearing a striped conductor's cap.
Arriane was fixated on the game. A chocolate cigar bobbed between her lips as she contemplated her next move. Roland was giving Arianne the hawk eye.
"Checkmate, bitch," Arianne said triumphantly, knocking over Roland's king.
β
β
Lauren Kate
β
However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. Where there's life, there's hope.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Iβm the Maiden, Hawke,β I reminded him β or myself, I wasnβt sure.
βAnd I donβt care.β
My eyes flew open in shock. βI canβt believe you just said that.β
βI did. And Iβll say it again. I donβt care what you are.β Hawkeβs hand slid off my back. A moment later, I felt his palm flatten against my cheek with unerring accuracy. βI care about who you are.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash, #1))
β
It matters if you just don't give up.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldnβt want to meet,
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
We have finally found something that doesnβt have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (Brief Answers to the Big Questions)
β
If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didnβt turn out very well for the Native Americans.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
tamquam alter idem
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy, #1))
β
Adam.
Ronan missed him like a lung.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy, #1))
β
The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves
β
β
Stephen Hawking (The Grand Design)
β
The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (The Grand Design)
β
Only time(whatever that may be) will tell.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
Dreams are not the safest thing to build a life on.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy #1))
β
I like physics, but I love cartoons.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
I'm not a wannabe. I'm who I wannabe.
β
β
Hawk Nelson
β
He started to pull away again but she called his name so he stopped.
βYeah?β
βBefore you go, give me the dimples,β she demanded.
That thing in his throat prickled and Hawk dipped his head and kissed the indentation at the base of his wifeβs throat. Then he lifted his head and smiled at her.
Her hand came to his face and he felt the pad of her thumb in one of his dimples.
Then her eyes moved from her thumb to his and she smiled back.
Β
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Mystery Man (Dream Man, #1))
β
When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didnβt exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. Itβs like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesnβt have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and itβs my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawkβs bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.
β
β
Plutarch
β
Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.
β
β
N.D. Wilson (Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World)
β
She got to me."
"It happens to the best of us."
"Yeah? Who gets to you?" He was so strong that sometimes she worried. Everyone needed to bend a little, even a panther responsible for the lives of his entire pack.
"That damn wolf. He sent you a present last week."
Sascha smiled at the thought of Hawke's flirting. The SnowDancer alpha did it only to jerk Lucas's chain. "I never saw any present. What was it?"
"How the hell should I know? I stomped on it and threw it into the deepest crevice I could find." He smirked. "Then I called him to ask how Sienna was doing."
She burst out laughing. "Wicked, wicked man.
β
β
Nalini Singh (Hostage to Pleasure (Psy-Changeling, #5))
β
The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. β¦ Time itself must come to a stop. You canβt get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything. β¦ So when people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them the question itself makes no sense. Time didnβt exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. Itβs like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth. The Earth is a sphere. It does not have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
Anyway.
Iβm not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I havenβt actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isnβt good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, βWhat you
have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back
of a giant tortoise.β So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing
on. And she said, βBut itβs turtles all the way down!β
I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β
If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
Ronan hadn't known anything about who Adam was then and, if possible, he'd known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God: Please.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy, #1))
β
So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you donβt just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.
β
β
Stephen Hawking (Brief Answers to the Big Questions)
β
We used to hear the stars, too. When people stopped talking, there was silence. Now you could shut every mouth on the planet and thereβd still be a hum. Air-conditioning groaning from the vent beside you. Semi trucks hissing on a highway miles away. A plane complaining ten thousand feet above you.
Silence is an extinct word.
It bothers you, doesnβt it?
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy, #1))
β
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At teh end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever, " said the old lady. "But it turtles all the way down!
β
β
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
β
Butterfly?" Will said. "Why Butterfly?"
"I believe it's a term of great respect," Selethen said gravely. He was very obviously not laughing. Too obviously, Will thought.
"It's all right for you," he said. "They called you 'Hawk.' Hawk is an excellent name. It's warlike and noble. But....Butterfly?
Selethen nodded. "I agree that Hawk is an entirely suitable name. I assume it had to do with my courage and nobility of heart.
Halt coughed and the Arridi lord looked at him, eyebrows raised.
"I think it referred less to your heart and more to another part of your body," Halt said mildly. He tapped his finger meaningfully along the side of his nose. It was a gesture he'd always wanted an opportunity to use, and this one was to good to miss. Selethen sniffed and turned away, affecting not to notice.
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John Flanagan
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As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen such a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look as was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted. She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, and high forehead and the wide-set eyes.
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Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
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Dear Max -
You looked so beautiful today. I'm going to remember what you looked like forever.
...
And I hope you remember me the same way - clean, ha-ha. I'm glad our last time together was happy.
But I'm leaving tonight, leaving the flock, and this time it's for good. I don't know if I'll ever see any of you again. The thing is, Max, that everyone is a little bit right. Added up all together, it makes this one big right.
Dylan's a little bit right about how my being here might be putting the rest of you in danger. The threat might have been just about Dr. Hans, but we don't know that for sure. Angel is a little bit right about how splitting up the flock will help all of us survive. And the rest of the flock is a little bit right about how when you and I are together, we're focused on each other - we can't help it.
The thing is, Maximum, I love you. I can't help but be focused on you when we're together. If you're in the room, I want to be next to you. If you're gone, I think about you. You're the one who I want to talk to. In a fight, I want you at my back. When we're together, the sun is shining. When we're apart, everything is in shades of gray.
I hope you'll forgive me someday for turning our worlds into shades of gray - at least for a while.
...
You're not at your best when you're focused on me. I mean, you're at your best Maxness, but not your best leaderness. I mostly need Maxness. The flock mostly needs leaderness. And Angel, if you're listening to this, it ain't you, sweetie. Not yet.
...
At least for a couple more years, the flock needs a leader to survive, no matter how capable everyone thinks he or she is. The truth is that they do need a leader, and the truth is that you are the best leader. It's one of the things I love about you.
But the more I thought about it, the more sure I got that this is the right thing to do. Maybe not for you, or for me, but for all of us together, our flock.
Please don't try to find me. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, besides wearing that suit today, and seeing you again will only make it harder. You'd ask me to come back, and I would, because I can't say no to you. But all the same problems would still be there, and I'd end up leaving again, and then we'd have to go through this all over again.
Please make us only go through this once.
...
I love you. I love your smile, your snarl, your grin, your face when you're sleeping. I love your hair streaming out behind you as we fly, with the sunlight making it shine, if it doesn't have too much mud or blood in it. I love seeing your wings spreading out, white and brown and tan and speckled, and the tiny, downy feathers right at the top of your shoulders. I love your eyes, whether they're cold or calculating or suspicious or laughing or warm, like when you look at me.
...
You're the best warrior I know, the best leader. You're the most comforting mom we've ever had. You're the biggest goofball, the worst driver, and a truly lousy cook. You've kept us safe and provided for us, in good times and bad. You're my best friend, my first and only love, and the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, with wings or without.
...
Tell you what, sweetie: If in twenty years we haven't expired yet, and the world is still more or less in one piece, I'll meet you at the top of that cliff where we first met the hawks and learned to fly with them. You know the one. Twenty years from today, if I'm alive, I'll be there, waiting for you. You can bet on it.
Good-bye, my love.
Fang
P.S. Tell everyone I sure will miss them
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James Patterson