Iconic Marvel Quotes

That is yet another marvel and mystery of the dog: it is the only animal that will place our safety and survival above its own.

Thus he became the archetype of the Renaissance Man, an inspiration to all who believe that the “infinite works of nature,” as he put it, are woven together in a unity filled with marvelous patterns.2 His ability to combine art and science, made iconic by his drawing of a perfectly proportioned man spread-eagle inside a circle and square, known as Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius.

And here before me stands a marvelously groomed little man who is pinning a hero's medal on me because some of his forebears were Alfred the Great and Charles the First, and even King Arthur, for anything I knew to the contrary. But I shouldn't be surprised if inside he feels as puzzled about the fate that brings him here as I. we are public icons, we two: he an icon of kingship, and I an icon of heroism, unreal yet very necessary; we have obligations above what is merely personal, and to let personal feelings obscure the obligations would be failing in one's duty. This was clearer still afterward, at lunch at the Savoy....; they all seemed to accept me as a genuine hero, and I did my best to behave decently, neither believing in it too obviously, nor yet protesting that I was just a simple chap who had done his duty when he saw it--a pose that has always disgusted me. Ever since, I have tried to think charitably of people in prominent positions of one kind or another. We cast them in roles, and it is only right to consider them as players, without trying to discredit them with knowledge of their off-stage life--unless they drag it into the middle of the stage themselves.

Like all disappearing forms, art seeks to duplicate itself by means of simulation, but it will nevertheless soon be gone, leaving behind an immense museum of artificial art and abandoning the field completely to advertising. A dizzying eclecticism of form, a dizzying eclecticism of pleasure - such, already, was the agenda of the baroque. For the baroque, however, the vortex of artifice has a fleshly aspect. Like the practitioners of the baroque, we too are irrepressible creators of images, but secretly we are iconoclasts - not in the sense that we destroy images, but in the sense that we manufacture a profusion of images in which there is nothing to see. Most present-day images - be they video images, paintings, products of the plastic arts, or audiovisual or synthesized images - are literally images in which there is nothing to see. They leave no trace, cast no shadow, and have no consequences. The only feeling one gets from such images is that behind each one there is something that has disappeared. The fascination of a monochromatic picture is the marvellous absence of form - the erasure, though still in the form of art, of all aesthetic syntax. Similarly, the fascination of trans sexuality is the erasure - though in the form of spectacle - of sexual difference. These are images that conceal nothing, that reveal nothing - that have a kind of negative intensity. The only benefit of a Campbell's soup can by Andy Warhol (and it is an immense benefit) is that it releases us from the need to decide between beautiful and ugly, between real and unreal, between transcendence and immanence. Just as Byzantine icons made it possible to stop asking whether God existed - without, for all that, ceasing to believe in him.

I once stood at a shrine and gazed at a wonder-working icon of the Mother of God, thinking of the childlike faith of the people praying before it; some women and infirm old men knelt, crossing themselves and bowing down to the earth. With ardent hope I gazed at the holy features, and little by little the secret of their marvellous power began to grow clear to me. Yes, this was not just a painted board – for centuries it had absorbed these passions and these hopes, the prayers of the afflicted and unhappy; it was filled with the energy of all these prayers. It had become a living organism, a meeting place between the Lord and men. Thinking of this, I looked once more at the old men, at the women and the children prostrate in the dust, and at the holy icon – and then I too saw the animated features of the Mother of God,

What’s more, members of Stan’s inner circle say JC lost all control in this stretch of time, allegedly going so far as to physically attack her parents. And yet, in a stunning contrast, while Stan became mired in the grime of his private world, his public image shone brighter than ever. As the Marvel brand ascended—first gradually, then rapidly—to the heights Stan had dreamed of, he was allowed to bask in its reflected glory, his face plastered on the big screen in cameo appearances that made him recognizable around the globe and swiftly solidified his status as a cultural icon of the upper echelons.

When Ask met Embla he was overcome with joy, allured by her beauty, and filled with gratitude for the marvelous partner he’d been given. He ruled not over her, nor she over him. They were equal in dignity, though distinct in constitution. Together, male and female bore children—thus, they fulfilled their own divine image, becoming makers themselves. Their progeny, in turn, helped to maintain the balance between the garden groves and the skies. “Meanwhile, Taranus, Hu-Esus, and Beli came together and placed an icon amongst men. A great tree, rooted in the ground yet elevating its branches toward the skies. It served as an image of the All Father’s character, a reminder of the role man and woman were to serve by maintaining balance in Abred, the natural realm. By reaching to the Tree, the soul of man and woman together participated in Gwynfydd, a place beyond though not above the natural realm, a place where they could hold together the mysteries of nature. Yet the most prominent of the Great Tree’s progeny, while matching the Great Tree in beauty, differed in character. The Great Tree had always taken from the land no more and no less than it needed. It reached to the sun and absorbed waters from the nearby wellsprings, but never in excess. The Great Tree exemplified balance and harmony in Abred. Insofar as Ask and Embla maintained the balance of things, respected the agency of each element and creature, the Great Tree was a true Tree of Life. It nourished them in kind, channeling Awen into their souls. “The other tree, its progeny, rebelled against its own nature. It sought not balance nor harmony between the elements, but its own magnificence. It took from the land not as the land would freely give, but whatever it might use at the land’s expense. It could take no more light than the sun would offer, but drawing in all moisture from every surrounding wellspring and from the air itself, the temperate sun no longer exhibited a pleasant warmth, but a scorching heat. “But Ask and Embla, blinded by this Wayward Tree’s magnificence, failed to see its true character. Allured by its fruit, they took from it and ate. Thus, Ask and Embla came to resemble the Wayward Tree and forgot the Tree of Life. “Enraged by what he had seen, how his likeness had departed from Awen and the way of the Great Tree of Life, the All Father—Taranus, Hu-Esus, and Beli—dispatched an emissary, the one known as Michael, to Earth to salvage what had been lost.

A catastrophe is Thom’s name for a major change in a system (described topologically) that occurs following a minor change in the external variables used to describe that system. His theory of catastrophes, however, is much more than an exercise in applied topology. Despite his—admittedly not very strong— protestations to the contrary, catastrophe theory makes a very strong metaphysical claim. Everything in the phenomenal world is a type of dynamical system that can be described by one of seven “catastrophe sets” (i.e., the parameters describing the system that indicate governance by one of the seven catastrophes). The ge- ometrical shapes of the seven “elementary catastrophes” bear an iconic rela- tionship to their names: the “cusp,” the “fold,” the “swallowtail,” the “wave” (hyperbolic umbilic), the “hair” (elliptic umbilic), the “mushroom” (parabolic umbillic), and the “butterfly” catastrophe set. Each of these is a recognizable “shape” imaging the topological distortions that the system undergoes when one or more of its variables are “tweaked.