“
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man ... a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.
”
”
Rod Serling
“
All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing -- glue your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.
”
”
Nisargadatta Maharaj
“
I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars. . . . I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. . . .
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft
“
Your limits are somewhere up there, waiting for you to reach beyond infinity.
”
”
Arnold Henry
“
It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (The Colour Out of Space and others)
“
My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain. . . . For as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.
”
”
Susan Kay (Phantom)
“
You can tell Laura to go fuck herself. Like to infinity and beyond.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
“
All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-disgust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny your self nothing--give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.
”
”
Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
“
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation is a teaching. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.
”
”
Emmanuel Levinas (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority)
“
The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.
”
”
Georgia O'Keeffe (Some Memories of Drawings)
“
Being with her always felt like gazing the stars and into the infinity, reading a book which never ends. She had no boundaries, all she knew was to shine, and live without any walls around her on every page.
”
”
Akshay Vasu
“
Even when we were standing in the church and I was getting ready to take my vows, I can remember wishing that you were standing there, instead of him. Because I not only still loved you, but loved you beyond measure.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Best of Me)
“
Ah, Macy Joleen O'James, I love you. More than I ever knew it was possible to love someone. I want to laugh with you when you're happy and hold you when you're sad and--hell. I don't even know what all. This is uncharted territory for me, but I know that I Buzz Lightyear love you. You know--to infinity and beyond?
”
”
Susan Andersen (Burning Up)
“
How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.
”
”
David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
“
The heart is a hollow muscle, and it will beat billions of times during our lives. About the size of a fist, it has four chambers: two Atria and two ventricles. How this muscle can house something as encompassing as love is beyond me. Is this heart the one that loves? or do you love with your soul, which is infinite?I don't know. All I know is that I feel this love in every molecule in my body, every breath I take, all the infinity in my soul.
”
”
Katy Evans (Mine (Real, #2))
“
The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that ‘black hole’ is infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions—nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze.
With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.
”
”
Gustave Flaubert
“
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and starred by red camalates...
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft
“
I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.
”
”
Winston S. Churchill (My Early Life, 1874-1904)
“
But in public who shall express the unseen adequately? It is private life that holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone, that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Howards End)
“
Learn more and Know more.
”
”
Steve Jobs (To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios)
“
Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again,the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence,... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.
”
”
Emmanuel Levinas (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority)
“
Creativity expands the mind, stretches it beyond ordinary human comprehension, resulting in the mind being elastic and capable of transcending and discerning complex ideas.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson (The Infinity Sign)
“
The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?
Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
”
”
Stephen King (The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1))
“
a connotation of infinity
sharpens the temporal splendor of this night
when souls which have forgot frivolity
in lowliness,noting the fatal flight
of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream
down eager avenues of lifelessness
consider for how much themselves shall gleam,
in the poised radiance of perpetualness.
When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought
is like a woman amorous to be known;
and man,whose here is alway worse than naught,
feels the tremendous yonder for his own—
on such a night the sea through her blind miles
of crumbling silence seriously smiles
”
”
E.E. Cummings (Complete Poems, 1913-35)
“
Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.
”
”
Henry Wiencek (The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White)
“
You really can go beyond infinity. Buzz Lightyear was the secret genius in Toy Story.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Life Impossible)
“
I am interested in longing, in longing so deep it threatens to splinter a person apart. I am interested in a profound longing for an unknown existence, or for a better life, without any idea of what the specifics of that life would look like. I’m not getting this right- I’m interested in knowing about the longing that unites all women, all mothers. What is that longing? How could we possibly long for something beyond our offspring?
It’s almost as if having a child allows a woman to see how much infinite potential there is, allows her to see infinity itself. (Am I making any sense?)
It’s almost as if having a child does not sate a deep yearning but instead compounds it.
”
”
Rachel Yoder (Nightbitch)
“
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught.”
― Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority
”
”
Emmanuel Levinas
“
It had come to him that no one would ever look from these eyes but he: that among all the lives, numerous beyond imagination, in which he might have lived, he was this one, pinned to this single point of infinity; the rest always to be alien, he to be I.
”
”
Mary Renault (The Charioteer)
“
The last function of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this.
”
”
Blaise Pascal
“
But beyond a certain scale vast was simply vast.
”
”
Alastair Reynolds (House of Suns)
“
We begin with the stars, then ascend up and away out to the galaxy, the universe, and beyond. What did Buzz Lightyear say in Toy Story? “To Infinity and Beyond!” It’s a big universe. I
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour)
“
For the first time in his life, Mont Blanc for a moment looked to him what it was - a chaos of anarchic and purposeless forces - and he needed days of repose to see it clothe itself again with the illusions of his senses, the white purity of its snows, the splendor of its light, and the infinity of its heavenly peace. Nature was kind; Lake Geneva was beautiful beyond itself, and the Alps put on charms real as terrors.
”
”
Henry Adams (The Education of Henry Adams)
“
Saint Bartleby's School for Young Gentlemen
Annual Report
Student: Artemis Fowl II
Year: First
Fees: Paid
Tutor: Dr Po
Language Arts
As far as I can tell, Artemis has made absolutely no progress since the beginning of the year. This is because his abilities are beyond the scope of my experience. He memorizes and understands Shakespeare after a single reading. He finds mistakes in every exercise I administer, and has taken to chuckling gently when I attempt to explain some of the more complex texts. Next year I intend to grant his request and give him a library pass during my class.
Mathematics
Artemis is an infuriating boy. One day he answers all my questions correctly, and the next every answer is wrong. He calls this an example of the chaos theory, and says that he is only trying to prepare me for the real world. He says the notion of infinity is ridiculous. Frankly, I am not trained to deal with a boy like Artemis. Most of my pupils have trouble counting without the aid of their fingers. I am sorry to say, there is nothing I can teach Artemis about mathematics, but someone should teach him some manners.
Social Studies
Artemis distrusts all history texts, because he says history was written by the victors. He prefers living history, where survivors of certain events can actually be interviewed. Obviously this makes studying the Middle Ages somewhat difficult. Artemis has asked for permission to build a time machine next year during double periods so that the entire class may view Medieval Ireland for ourselves. I have granted his wish and would not be at all surprised if he succeeded in his goal.
Science
Artemis does not see himself as a student, rather as a foil for the theories of science. He insists that the periodic table is a few elements short and that the theory of relativity is all very well on paper but would not hold up in the real world, because space will disintegrate before lime. I made the mistake of arguing once, and young Artemis reduced me to near tears in seconds. Artemis has asked for permission to conduct failure analysis tests on the school next term. I must grant his request, as I fear there is nothing he can learn from me.
Social & Personal Development
Artemis is quite perceptive and extremely intellectual. He can answer the questions on any psychological profile perfectly, but this is only because he knows the perfect answer. I fear that Artemis feels that the other boys are too childish. He refuses to socialize, preferring to work on his various projects during free periods. The more he works alone, the more isolated he becomes, and if he does not change his habits soon, he may isolate himself completely from anyone wishing to be his friend, and, ultimately, his family. Must try harder.
”
”
Eoin Colfer
“
Your voice tears me away from the reality that I exist and places my mind somewhere in between the infinity and beyond. Where everything is made of bliss and magic. Sometimes, I am scared of not hearing it again and never being able to get separated from this chaotic reality again.
”
”
Akshay Vasu
“
I go to all the appointments. All the meetings. I sit with the team of inclusion teachers, occupational therapists, doctors, social workers, remedial teachers, and the cab driver that gets him from appointment to appointment, and I push for everything that can be done for my autistic boy. But I will never have a plan that will fix him. Noah is not something to be fixed.
And our life will never be normal. And people always say,
oh well what’s normal, there’s no such thing really, and I say —
sure there is…there’s a spectrum… and there’s lots and lots of possibilities within that spectrum, and trust me buddy, ducks on the moon ain’t one of them….but ….
In this abnormal life, I get to live with a pirate,
and a bird fancier, and an ogre, and a hedgehog, and many many superheroes, and aliens and monsters —
and an angel.
I get to go to infinity and beyond.
”
”
Kelley Jo Burke (Ducks on the Moon: A Parent Meets Autism)
“
All that you are
forever to Be,
Is prior to...
and just beyond
Infinity.
”
”
Leland Lewis (Angel Stories. Angelic Tales of the Universe. Tales 1 through 6.)
“
Around them small animals scampered along knotted cables and flaking vines, chirruping, squealing, venting yellow farts. Everywhere was animation, purpose, hurry. Momentum.
”
”
Gregory Benford
“
...she wondered if in fact this had been the closest she had been to god--not in fact invisible parent, not sun warming the earth and coaxing the seeds from the soil--but the nothing at the center of the self. Not the Word, because speaking the Word limits the greatness of the infinite; but the silence beyond the Word in which there lives infinity.
”
”
Lauren Groff (Matrix)
“
I thought that I must always search for the remarkable combinations, add unknowns, mix things that were clearly marked with things beyond marking. I would leave the simulated test and enter into forbidden territory. I would look for that moment when I would begin to pour alone and in wonder. I would always try to seize that moment and to accept its challenge. I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing faith and a belief in astonishment. And if by accident, I could make a volcano in a single test tube, then what could I do with all the strange magnificent elements of the world with its infinity of unknowns, with the swarm of man, with civilization, with language?
”
”
Pat Conroy (The Lords of Discipline)
“
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But it also means: to be taught.
”
”
Emmanuel Levinas (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority)
“
Every child should learn to program a computer because it will teach you how to think.
”
”
Steve Jobs (To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios)
“
Fly beyond infinities.
”
”
Joe Mari Fadrigalan
“
Creatures...infinity...our minds have ceilings, Malorie...these things...they are beyond it...higher than it...out of reach...out of—
”
”
Josh Malerman (Bird Box (Bird Box, #1))
“
Infinity lies beyond human vision and it is possible to communicate with these other realities which have a far more advanced awareness than humans are allowed to have
”
”
David Icke (The Perception Deception - Part One)
“
Beyond the horizon
I may not stand still
but all I want is to feel the infinity
and I know that the best way
to feel something is to become so.
”
”
Nicko Shoid
“
In a weathered closet, I saw a universe of irredeemable beauty. My eyes misted over in joy; hardly could I hold the rivers back. A galactic invitation stood in my room.
”
”
Vladimir Hlocky (Journeys Beyond Earth (#1))
“
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.
”
”
Rod Serling
“
You see that stones are worn away by time,
Rocks rot, and twoers topple, even the shrines
And images of the gods grow very tired,
Develop crack or wrinkles, their holy wills
Unable to extend their fated term,
To litigate against the Laws of Nature.
And don't we see the monuments of men
Collapse, as if to ask us, "Are not we
As frail as those whom we commemorate?"?
Boulders come plunging down from the mountain heights,
Poor weaklings with no power to resist
The thrust that says to them, Your time has come!
But they would be rooted in steadfastness
Had they endured from time beyond all time,
As far back as infinity. Look about you!
Whatever it is that holds in its embrace
All earth, if it projects, as some men say,
All things out of itself, and takes them back
When they have perished, must itself consist
Of mortal elements. The parts must add
Up to the sum. Whatever gives away
Must lose in the procedure, and gain again
Whenever it takes back.
”
”
Lucretius (On the Nature of Things)
“
Delusion is so incredibly powerful, much more pervasive than most people know. As Voltaire quipped, “The only way to comprehend the mathematical concept of infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.
”
”
Ajahn Brahm (Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook)
“
I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature, that is, what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I hope, that's it, isn't it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God honestly and simply. But you must note this: If God exists and if He really did create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of only three dimensions in space. Yet there have been some very distinguished ones, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more generally the whole of being, was only created in Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world? And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with a conception of only three dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more I accept His wisdom, His purpose - which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was "with God", and Which Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
“
Nothing is ordinary,' said the tyger. 'Everything is extraordinary. In all of infinity and eternity, that flower exists only in this world; this precise position in space and time. Everywhere else, there is a different flower, or no flower at all. And the same is true of you. Nothing special? You are miraculous beyond measure, both of you.
”
”
S.F. Said (Tyger)
“
She was this girl living in a bottomless hole of her thoughts.
One day she saw a light. She felt the warmth and walked in its direction.
It was there that she found him.
He spoke to her and wove tendrils of love on her heart.
His compassion was over whelming for her.
His words, his love, his eyes- everything about him was so pure, so true.
Her heart was getting intertwined with the love he was bestowing upon her.
The mesh of affection he weaved around her heart made it breathe. And live.
Vine by vine the mesh thickened.
Today, he is her beloved. They are inseparable.
He smiles, she smiles. They weave dreams.
She loves him beyond infinity.
He has her heart strings. And as he walks, she walks with him.
”
”
Geetansha Sood
“
sure to become mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in big business and popular culture . . . Isaacson is to be commended for explaining the genius of Jobs in fascinating fashion, launching a discussion that could reach infinity and beyond.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit of the generations, welcoming the new generations, and chafing against the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another's infinity; he is conscious only of his own--flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and time.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Howards End)
“
There were several recently dug graves in the churchyard, but I found only one that was freshly dug and covered with fresh flowers. I had known Anna only from a few laughing words, from the light in her eyes, a touch of hands and a fleeting kiss, but I felt an ache inside me such as I had not felt since I was a child, since my father’s death. I looked up at the church steeple, a dark arrow pointing at the moon and beyond, and tried with all my heart and mind to believe she was up there somewhere in that vast expanse of infinity, up there in Sunday-school Heaven, in Big Joe’s happy Heaven. I couldn’t bring myself to think it. I knew she was lying in the cold earth at my feet. I knelt down and kissed the earth, then left her there. The moon sailed above me, following behind me, through the trees, lighting my way back to camp. By the time I got there I had no more tears left to cry. The
”
”
Michael Morpurgo (Private Peaceful)
“
Wisdom, ambition, sadness, joy, malice, grief, amazement, all the emotions which blaze within the human soul may be recorded on a page.
Nestled in a sheaf of paper sleeps an infinity beyond the limits of the universe. Just by opening a single page, we may fly into that infinity.
”
”
Tanigawa Nagaru
“
Mad raging sunsets poured in seafoams of cloud through unimaginable crags, with every rose tint of hope beyond, I felt just like it, brilliant and bleak beyond words. Everywhere awful ice fields and snow straws; one blade of grass jiggling in the winds of infinity, anchored to a rock. To the East, it was gray; to the north, awful; to the west, raging mad, hard iron fools wrestling in the groomian gloom; to the south, my father's mist.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)
“
This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space - a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft
“
He closed his eyes.
Found the ridged face of the power stud.
And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiled in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like a film compiled of random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information.
Please, he prayed, now-
A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky.
Now-
Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding-
And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of the military systems, forever beyond his reach.
And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.
”
”
William Gibson (Neuromancer (Sprawl #1))
“
The Apollinian [classical Greek] Culture recognized as actual only that which was immediately present in time and place-and thus it repudiated the background as pictorial element. The Faustian [modern Western] strove through all sensuous barriers towards infinity-and it projected the center of gravity of the pictorial idea into the distance by means of perspective. The Magian [Byzantine-Arabian] felt all happening as an expression of mysterious powers that filled the world-cavern with their spiritual substance-and it shut off the depicted scene with a gold background, that is, by something that stood beyond and outside all nature-colours. Gold is not a colour.
”
”
Oswald Spengler
“
Isaacson is to be commended for explaining the genius of Jobs in fascinating fashion, launching a discussion that could reach infinity and beyond.” —The Christian Science Monitor “Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs comes as a breath of fresh air . . . a reliable and captivating guide to a man who reshaped the computing industry
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
Most often, we walk without understanding this movement, without hearing its step, but knowing that we must go beyond an emptiness in us, and that only then our walk begins. In these moments, I think of the desert, of you.
Suddenly the beating of a bird's heart; that alone breaks the air. Behind me, steps I know I made but which the ground did not retain. I wanted to learn thirst. Sand is this infinity that passes through us slowly ever since a beginning that we cannot name. Stripped of itself, the world restores its whiteness which, alone now, upholds the memory I am remaking. Detached, I am still trying to see if there is someone.
My flesh melted in the desert.
”
”
Hélène Dorion (The Edges of Light: Selected Poems, 1983-1990)
“
There was a long pause. “you know,” he went on, “I sometimes think mankind is dangerously arrogant. We do a few sums, and then claim we have the universe off pat. we measure the spaces between the stars, and declare them empty. We set a limit on infinity. We are like the occupants of a closed room; having worked out everything within the range of our knowledge, we announce that the room and its contents are all that exists. Nothing beyond. Nothing unseen or unknown, incalculable or neffable. This is it. And then every so often God lifts the veil—twitches the curtain—and gives us a glimpse, just a glimpse, of something more. As if He wishes to show us how narrow is our vision, how meaningless the boundaries we have set for ourselves. I felt that when Fern was talking. Just for a minute I though: This is truth, there’s a world beyond all the jargon of unbelief.
”
”
Jan Siegel (Prospero's Children (Fern Capel #1))
“
Let your true love be your lifetime treasure and beyond.
”
”
Angelica Hopes
“
The last function of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this.
”
”
Blaise Pascal
“
To infinity…and beyond!
”
”
Toy Story (1995)
“
There is no limit to stupidity. Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.
”
”
Gene Wolfe (The Citadel of the Autarch)
“
As all slaves of all broken systems your mind is as shackled as your existence - unable to conceive of a world beyond the boundries of your prison
”
”
Tom Parkinson-Morgan (Kill Six Billion Demons, Book 5: Breaker of Infinities)
“
The dead have nothing left to them but a silent faith in that unknowable infinity – even if theirs is a belief that nothing waits but an infinity of infinities. Because believing in nothing is still believing in something – and only by reaching eternity will anyone know the truth of it all.
The deadish are very much like the dead, but with one exception: The deadish do not know infinity, which means they don’t have to concern themselves with what waits beyond. They have something the dead do not. They have a future. Or at least the hope of one.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3))
“
The theory reaches out, as it were, from its finite origins inside one brain that has been affected only by scraps of patchy evidence from a small part of one hemisphere of one planet – to infinity. This reach of explanations is another meaning of ‘the beginning of infinity’. It is the ability of some of them to solve problems beyond those that they were created to solve.
”
”
David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World)
“
He sounded like he might just as well have been off in the emptiness of some awful cold black hole, out there in the timeless infinity far beyond the reach of warmth and earthly human feeling
”
”
Angela Bowie (Bowie: A Biography)
“
If we put this whole progression in terms of our discussion of the possibilities of heroism, it goes like this: Man breaks through the bounds of merely cultural heroism; he destroys the character lie that had him perform as a hero in the everyday social scheme of things; and by doing so he opens himself up to infinity, to the possibility of cosmic heroism, to the very service of God. His life thereby acquires ultimate value in place of merely social and cultural, historical value. He links his secret inner self, his authentic talent, his deepest feelings of uniqueness, his inner yearning for absolute significance, to the very ground of creation. Out of the ruins of the broken cultural self there remains the mystery of the private, invisible, inner self which yearned for ultimate significance, for cosmic heroism. This invisible mystery at the heart of every creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation. This is the meaning of faith. At the same time it is the meaning of the merger of psychology and religion in Kierkegaard's thought. The truly open person, the one who has shed his character armor, the vital lie of his cultural conditioning, is beyond the help of any mere "science," of any merely social standard of health. He is absolutely alone and trembling on the bring of oblivion-which is at the same time the brink of infinity. To give him the new support that he needs, the "courage to renounce dread without any dread...only faith is capable of," says Kierkegaard. Not that this is an easy out for man, or a cure-all for the human condition-Kierkegaard is never facile. He gives a strikingly beautiful idea:
not that [faith] annihilates dread, but remaining ever young, it is continually developing itself out of the death throe of dread.
In other words, as long as man is an ambiguous creature he can never banish anxiety; what he can do instead is to use anxiety as an eternal spring for growth into new dimensions of thought and trust. Faith poses a new life task, the adventure in openness to a multi-dimensional reality.
”
”
Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)
“
...few truly understood how disheartening it was to be cut off from worlds so strange and distant they remained to us fantasies rather than distant realities, too surreal and foreign to be touched. Their minds were fixated on what they knew to be real, unable to create the atmospheres of the nebulous realms that lay just beyond our reach, just beyond the dimming horizon, our celestial limits.
”
”
Moonie
“
The creative life! Ascension. Passing beyond oneself. Rocketing out into the blue, grasping at flying ladders, mounting, soaring, lifting the world up by the scalp, rousing the angels from their ethereal lairs, drowning in stellar depths, clinging to the tails of comets. Nietzsche had written of it ecstatically —and then swooned forward into the mirror to die in root and flower. «Stairs and contradictory stairs,» he wrote, and then suddenly there was no longer any bottom; the mind, like a splintered diamond, was pulverized by the hammer−blows of truth. There was a time when I acted as my father's keeper. I was left alone for long hours, cooped up in the little booth which we used as an office. While he was drinking with his cronies I was feeding from the bottle of creative life. My companions were the free spirits, the overlords of the soul. The young man sitting there in the mingy yellow light became completely unhinged; he lived in the crevices of great thoughts, crouched like a hermit in the barren folds of a lofty mountain range. From truth he passed to imagination and from imagination to invention. At this last portal, through which there is no return, fear beset him. To venture farther was to wander alone, to rely wholly upon oneself. The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But freedom leads to infinity and infinity is terrifying. Then arose the comforting thought of stopping at the brink, of setting down in words the mysteries of impulsion, compulsion, propulsion, of bathing the senses in human odors. To become utterly human, the compassionate fiend incarnate, the locksmith of the great door leading beyond and away and forever isolate.
Men founder like ships. Children also. There are children who settle to the bottom at the age of nine, carrying with them the secret of their betrayal. There are perfidious monsters who look at you with the bland, innocent eyes of youth; their crimes are unregistered, because we have no names for them.
”
”
Henry Miller (Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1))
“
And lastly, the vastest circle, the infinity, the center point—Faëry, ladies and gentlemen, where the heroes ride across endless landscapes and sail sea beyond sea and there is no end to possibility—
”
”
John Crowley (Little, Big)
“
Charlie, you know infinity and beyond? That’s where my love for Lily stretches. Nothing compares, nothing will ever compare to Lily. Everything is Lily. I know that word doesn’t sound like much, and it’s not very descriptive, but believe me when Lily is in the room and I look at her, my heart beats only for her. Love with every beat. Every beat is Lily, every thought is Lily, every feeling is Lily, every emotion is Lily. Everything IS Lily.
”
”
K.L. Shandwick (Love with Every Beat)
“
For suddenly it was clear to me that virtue in the creator is not the same as virtue in the creature. For the creator, if he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself. I saw that the virtue of the creature was to love and to worship, but the virtue of the creator was to create, and to be the infinite, the unrealizable and incomprehensible goal of worshipping creatures.
”
”
Olaf Stapledon (Star Maker)
“
Why? Don’t you know why you love me?”
“I know that I’m happiest at your side,” I said fervently. “I know that when we’re apart, my heart is with you, when we disagree I still want you near. It’s like I was made for you, amira, but I don’t know why.”
“Kashmir . . .” She laughed a little in disbelief. “That’s . . . that’s what love looks like.”
“But is it only a trick of Navigation?” I asked, nearly pleading. “And if so, what is truly mine?”
“I am.”
Her words took me by surprise. She said it so simply—so quiet, so true. Only two words, three letters, one breath, but never had a promise held more meaning. She turned to me then, and in her eyes, I saw not oblivion, but infinity, and the stars were not as bright as her smile.
”
”
Heidi Heilig (The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl From Everywhere, #2))
“
The full moon stood high in the limpid sky. Far away forests and fields that had been in invisible beyond the confines of the camp were now coming into sight. And out there beyond the forests and fields lay all the shimmering, beckoning distance of infinity. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the play of the stars receding into the depths. ‘And it’s all mine, and it’s all within me, and it all adds up to me!’ thought Pierre. ‘And they caught all that, shut it up in a shed and boarded it in!
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
“
When human life lay foul for all to see
Upon the earth, crushed by the burden of religion,
Religion which from heaven’s firmament
Displayed its face, its ghastly countenance,
Lowering above mankind, the first who dared
Raise mortal eyes against it, first to take
His stand against it, was a man of Greece.
He was not cowed by fables of the gods
Or thunderbolts or heaven’s threatening roar,
But they the more spurred on his ardent soul
Yearning to be the first to break apart
The bolts of nature’s gates and throw them open.
Therefore his lively intellect prevailed
And forth he marched, advancing onwards far
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world,
And voyaged in mind throughout infinity,
Whence he victorious back in triumph brings
Report of what can be and what cannot
And in what manner each thing has a power
That’s limited, and deep-set boundary stone.
Wherefore religion in its turn is cast
Beneath the feet of men and trampled down,
And us his victory has made peers of heaven.
”
”
Lucretius
“
struck depths that your little brain can’t picture! I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars… I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness… Space belongs to me, do you hear?
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction)
“
I think...” He pauses. “In a true pursuit of happiness, you understand that there are infinite paths to happiness. Today, what makes me happy is driving down this deserted road, talking to you, Indigo. I’m intensely happy. But tomorrow, we won’t have this moment. Next week you’ll be back in school. I’ll be back at work. You see? Just because the moment flees from us, doesn’t take it away. We keep it forever. Think of life like a jar and happiness like pieces of candy. We’re filling up the jar. To infinity and beyond.
”
”
Dana L. Davis (The Voice in My Head: A Powerful YA Novel of Healing and a Desperate Road Trip)
“
Look at me—listen to what I say—do you suppose there are really any such things as time and magnitude? Do you fancy there are such things as form or matter? I tell you, I have struck depths that your little brain can’t picture. I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars…. I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness…. Space belongs to me, do you hear? Things are hunting me now—the things that devour and dissolve—but I know how to elude them.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (Dreams of Terror and Death)
“
We have seen that psychology has accustomed us to the fact there is more to ourselves than we suspect. Like the eighteenth century European view of the earth, our minds have their own darkest Africas, their unmapped Borneos, their Amazonian basins. Their bulk continues to await exploration. Hinduism sees the mind’s hidden continents as stretching to infinity. Infinite in being, infinite in awareness, there is nothing beyond them that remains unknown. Infinite in joy, too, for there is nothing alien in them to mar their beatitude.
”
”
Huston Smith (The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions)
“
The Cutting Edges of all Eternities combined were not as sharp as those of the Blade-Saint Valkyrie’s, who loved much and who pierced deep, far beyond infinity’s meager grasp for those whom she loved.
On Valkyrie Kari, Cold Steel Eternity, Vol. II (Valley of the Damned)
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent
“
You can only find out
what you are from what you are not
which is everything and nothing.
Your home is everywhere and nowhere.
Your true identity is no identity.
You aren't an owner but
a messenger of the infinity,
The no-thing is open to everything,
timeless and Free.
”
”
Alexis Karpouzos (AN OCEAN OF SOULS: Beyond the heaven (Mystic Poetry))
“
Our road not marked on maps.
Fugitives of the centuries,
our origin is the breathing
and our destination is exhalation,
A thousand suns are flowing in our blood,
and the vision of infinity is always chasing us.
The form cannot tame us,
Our days are a fire and our nights a sea.
”
”
Alexis Karpouzos (AN OCEAN OF SOULS: Beyond the heaven (Mystic Poetry))
“
Her bloodshot eyes squinted at nothing; she seemed momentarily mesmerised, lost in contemplation of sums so vast and dazzling that they were beyond her ken, like an image of infinity. Merely to speak of them was to taste the power of money, to roll dreams of wealth around her mouth.
”
”
Robert Galbraith (The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1))
“
But what you’re calling poetry is what everything is. It’s not even poetry — it’s seeing. These materialists are blind. You told me they say space is infinite. Where do they see that in space?”
And I, disconcerted: “But don’t you think of space as infinite? Can’t you conceive of space as infinite?”
“I don’t conceive of anything as being infinite. How could I conceive of anything as being infinite?”
“But, man,” I said, “Imagine space. Beyond that space is more space, and beyond that more, and then more, and more... It never ends...“
“Why?” asked my master Caeiro.
”
”
Álvaro de Campos
“
This scroll, five hundred years old and more, had been inspired by her favorite, the great Wang Wei, master of landscape art, who had painted the scenes from his own home, where he lived for thirty years before he died. Now behind the palace walls on this winter’s day, where she could see only sky and falling snow, Tzu His gazed upon the green landscapes of continuing spring. One landscape melted into another as slowly she unrolled the scroll, so that she might dwell upon every detail of tree and brook and distant hillside. So did she, in imagination, pass beyond the high walls which enclosed her, and she traveled through a delectable country, beside flowing brooks and spreading lakes, and following the ever-flowing river she crossed over wooden bridges and climbed the stony pathways upon a high mountainside and thence looked down a gorge to see a torrent fed by still higher springs, and breaking into waterfalls as it traveled toward the plains. Down from the mountain again she came, past small villages nestling in pine forests and into the warmer valleys among bamboo groves, and she paused in a poet’s pavilion, and so reached at last the shore where the river lost itself in a bay. There among the reeds a fisherman’s boat rose and fell upon the rising tide. Here the river ended, its horizon the open sea and the misted mountains of infinity. This scroll, Lady Miao had once told her, was the artist’s picture of the human soul, passing through the pleasantest scenes of earth to the last view of the unknown future, far beyond.
”
”
Pearl S. Buck (Imperial Woman)
“
Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the world’s waters, when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit of the generations, welcoming the new generation, and chafing against the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another’s infinity; he is conscious only of his own — flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and time.
”
”
E.M. Forster (The Works of E. M. Forster)
“
The notion of infinity had long since been introduced into mathematics, but this infinity was what philosophers call a becoming. Mathematical infinity was only a quantity susceptible of growing beyond all limit; it was a variable quantity of which it could not be said that it had passed, but only that it would pass, all limits.
”
”
Henri Poincaré (Science and Hypothesis)
“
The notion of infinity had long since been introduced into mathematics, but this infinity was what philosophers call a becoming; Mathematical infinity was only a quantity susceptible of growing beyond all limit; it was a variable quantity of which it could not be said that it had passed, but only that it would pass, all limits.
”
”
Henri Poincaré
“
Two things fill the mind with every new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadily I reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not merely conjecture them and seek them as if they were obscured in darkness or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I connect them directly with the consciousness of my own existence. The starry heavens begin at the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and they broaden the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and systems of systems and into the limitless times of their periodic motion, their beginning and duration. The latter begins at my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity but which only the understanding can trace - a world in which I recognise myself as existing in a universal and necessary ( and not, as in the first case, only contingent) connection, and thereby also in connection with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an 'animal creature' which must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter fro which it came, matter which is for a little time endowed with vital force, we know not how. The latter, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as that of an 'intelligence' by my being a person in whom the moral law reveals to me a life independent of all animality and even of the whole world of sense, at least so far as it may be inferred from the final destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination which is not restricted to the conditions and boundaries of this life but reaches into the infinite.
”
”
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason)
“
Wren’s voice dropped. “She feels terrible about it, Cath.”
“Good!” Cath shouted. “So do I!” She took a step closer to her sister. “I’m
probably going to be crazy for the rest of my life, thanks to her. I’m going to
keep making fucked-up decisions and doing weird things that I don’t even
realize are weird. People are going to feel sorry for me, and I won’t ever have
any normal relationships—and it’s always going to be because I didn’t have a
mother. Always. That’s the ultimate kind of broken. The kind of damage you never recover from. I hope she feels terrible. I hope she never forgives herself.”
“Don’t say that.” Wren’s face was red, and there were tears in her eyes.
“I’m not broken.”
There weren’t any tears in Cath’s eyes. “Cracks in your foundation.” She
shrugged.
“Fuck that.”
“Do you think I absorbed all the impact? That when Mom left, it hit my
side of the car? Fuck that, Wren. She left you, too.”
“But it didn’t break me. Nothing can break me unless I let it.”
“Do you think Dad let it? Do you think he chose to fall apart when she
left?”
“Yes!” Wren was shouting now. “And I think he keeps choosing. I think
you both do. You’d rather be broken than move on.”
“Dad’s sick, Wren,” she said as calmly as she could manage.
“And your omelette’s burnt. And I’d rather be broken than wasted.” She set
the plate on the counter. “You can tell Laura to go fuck herself. Like, to infinity and beyond. She doesn’t get to move on with me. Ever.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
“
He drunkenly recognized that the lust was part of something bigger, of a craving to pursue pleasure unreasonably, beyond the right and wrong, to go as far as his body took him. In the body there is no absolute, or free, will, but the body is determined to desire this or that by a cause that is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so on to infinity.
”
”
Aleksandar Hemon (The Making of Zombie Wars)
“
There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
“
[T]he question of the existence of God can be neither asked nor answered. If asked, it is a question about that which by its very nature is above existence, and therefore the answer - whether negative or affirmative - implicitly denies the nature of God. It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it. God is being-itself, not a being. On this basis a first step can be taken toward the solution of the problem which usually is discussed as the immanence and the transcendence of God. As the power of being, God transcends every being and also the totality of beings - the world. Being-itself is beyond finitude and infinity; otherwise it would be conditioned by something other than itself, and the real power of being would lie beyond both it and that which conditioned it. Being-itself infinitely transcends every finite being. There is no proportion or gradation between the finite and the infinite. There is an absolute break, an infinite “jump.” On the other hand, everything finite participates in being-itself and in its infinity. Otherwise it would not have the power of being. It would be swallowed by nonbeing, or it never would have emerged out of nonbeing. This double relation of all beings to being-itself gives being-itself a double characteristic. In calling it creative, we point to the fact that everything participates in the infinite power of being. In calling it abysmal, we point to the fact that everything participates in the power of being in a finite way, that all beings are infinitely transcended by their creative ground.
”
”
Paul Tillich (Systematic Theology, Vol 1)
“
I come from the depths of infinity
and from all directions of space-time.
I traveled through dark tunnels, went through solar storms.
I went straight, circled, parallel, rotated as a spiral.
Cosmic clouds trapped me and escaped from them.
Avoided collisions with meteories.
I was helped by exotic particles,
neutron stars and the love of gravity.
Every leaf, every flower, every mountain and lake,
every cloud and every star and every atom recognize me and greet me.
I feel that i have live for million lifetimes.
Who am i? What is my purpose?
Last night i sent a question into universe, asking ”who am i or am i not?
The universe responded immediately:
”You asked me the same thing billions of years ago.
And then and now i answer:
You’re the smile of no birth and no death,
The Hidden Law!
”
”
Alexis Karpouzos (AN OCEAN OF SOULS: Beyond the heaven (Mystic Poetry))
“
The truth is transparent and goes unnoticed, whereas lies are opaque and let in neither light nor gaze. There is a third version, where the two mix, and this is the most customary. With one eye we see through the truth, and that gaze is lost forever in infinity; with the other eye we do not see even an inch through the lies, and that gaze can penetrate no further, but remains on earth and ours; and so we push through life sideways. Hence, the truth cannot be understood on its own, like a lie, but only by comparing it with lies, by comparing the white space with the letters of our Book, because the white spaces in The Khazar Dictionary mark the translucent places of the divine truth and name (Adam Cadmon), and the black letters between the white spaces are where our eyes cannot penetrate beyond the surface.
”
”
Milorad Pavić (Dictionary of the Khazars)
“
Man is finite, man's reason lives in preliminary concerns; but man is also aware of his potential infinity, and this awareness appears as his ultimate concern, as faith. If reason is grasped by an ultimate concern, it is driven beyond itself; but it does not cease to be reason, finite reason. The ecstatic experience of an ultimate concern does not destroy the structure of reason. Ecstasy is fulfilled, not denied, rationality.
”
”
Paul Tillich (Dynamics of Faith)
“
You must take into account the actual distinction between truth and fact. It is beyond all human power to tell all the facts. Your whole lifetime spent at nothing else would not tell all the facts of one morning in your life, just any ordinary morning when you get up, dress, get breakfast and wash the dishes. Facts are infinite in number. The truth is a meaning underlying them; you tell the truth by selecting the facts to illustrate it.
”
”
Rose Wilder Lane
“
And later, as the bells for Matins sounded in the dark and she walked back in the darkness as though blind, she wondered if in fact this had been the closest she had been to god—not in fact invisible parent, not sun warming the earth and coaxing the seeds from the soil—but the nothing at the center of the self. Not the Word, because speaking the Word limits the greatness of the infinite; but the silence beyond the Word in which there lives infinity.
”
”
Lauren Groff (Matrix)
“
Beyond these the flowers were more frequent, but paler, less glossy, more thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in festoons so graceful that I would fancy I saw floating upon the stream, as though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over the transparent shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey border also, for it set beneath the flowers a soil of a colour more precious, more moving than their own; and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled beneath the lilies in the kaleidoscope of a happiness silent, restless, and alert, and towards evening, when it was filled like a distant heaven with the roseate dreams of the setting sun, incessantly changing and ever remaining in harmony, about the more permanent colour of the flowers themselves, with the utmost profundity, evanescence, and mystery — with a quiet suggestion of infinity; afternoon or evening, it seemed to have set them flowering in the heart of the sky.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7])
“
All stories are incomplete. Yet in order to construct a viable identity for myself and give meaning to my life, I don’t really need a complete story devoid of blind spots and internal contradictions. To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions: first, it must give me some role to play. A New Guinean tribesman is unlikely to believe in Zionism or in Serbian nationalism, because these stories don’t care at all about New Guinea and its people. Like movie stars, humans like only those scripts that reserve an important role for them.
Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons. The story provides me with an identity and gives meaning to my life by embedding me within something bigger than myself. But there is always a danger that I might start wondering what gives meaning to that ‘something bigger’. If the meaning of my life is to help the proletariat or the Polish nation, what exactly gives meaning to the proletariat or to the Polish nation? There is a story of a man who claimed that the world is kept in place by resting on the back of a huge elephant. When asked what the elephant stands on, he replied “that it stands on the back of a large turtle. And the turtle? On the back of an even bigger turtle. And that bigger turtle? The man snapped and said: ‘Don’t bother about it. From there onwards it’s turtles all the way down.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
After an eventful journey - it was even life-threatening because of flooding in Como, which I only reached late at night - I arrived in Turin on the afternoon of the 21st, my proven place, my residence from then on. I took the same apartment that I had in the spring, via Carlo Alberto 6, III, across from the enormous Palazzo Carignano where Vittore Emanuele was born, with a view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and the hills beyond. I went back to work without delay: only the last quarter of the work was left to be done. Great victory on 30 September; the conclusion of the Revaluation; the leisure of a god walking along the river Po. That same day, I wrote the Preface to Twilight of the Idols: I had corrected the manuscript for it in September, as my recuperation. - I never experienced an autumn like this before, I never thought anything like this could happen on earth, - a Claude Lorrain projected out to infinity, every day having the same tremendous perfection.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
“
For what is it you and I are trying to do now? What I'm trying to do is to attempt to explain to you as quickly as possible the most important thing about me, that is to say, what sort of man I am, what I believe in what I hope for - that's it isn't it? And that's why I declare that I accept God plainly and simply. But there's this that has to be said: if God really exists and if he really has created the world, then, as we all know, he created it in accordance with the Euclidean geometry, and he created the human mind with the conception of only the three dimensions of space. And yet there have been and there still are mathematicians and philosophers, some of them indeed men of extraordinary genius, who doubt whether the whole universe, or, to put it more wildly, all existence was created only according to Euclidean geometry and they even dare to dream that two parallel lines which, according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear chap, have come to the conclusion that if I can't understand even that, then how can I be expected to understand about God? I humbly admit that I have no abilities for settling such questions. And I advise you too, Aloysha, my friend, never to think about it, and least of all about whether there is a God or not. All these problems which are entirely unsuitable to a mind created with the idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God, and I accept him not only without reluctance, but what's more, I accept his divine wisdom and his purpose- which are completely beyond our comprehension.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“
Sometimes, when I was tired of working, I would go to the Museum of Modern Art. Standing before the great pageant of art history, I would gaze on the works that have survived beyond their times, analy-sing and evaluating them as if trying to solve mathematical puzzles, attempting to assess them in the context of the societies and times that had engendered them; but then I would return to myself and, in trying to consider the next starting point for my work, always find myself faced with the difficulty of reading my own future.
”
”
Yayoi Kusama (Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama)
“
A poster of a woman in tights heralded the Christmas pantomime, and little red devils, who had come in again that year, were prevalent upon the Christmas-cards. Margaret was no morbid idealist. She did not wish this spate of business and self-advertisement checked. It was only the occasion of it that struck her with amazement annually. How many of these vacillating shoppers and tired shop-assistants realised that it was a divine event that drew them together? She realised it, though standing outside in the matter. She was not a Christian in the accepted sense; she did not believe that God had ever worked among us as a young artisan. These people, or most of them, believed it, and if pressed, would affirm it in words. But the visible signs of their belief were Regent Street or Drury Lane, a little mud displaced, a little money spent, a little food cooked, eaten, and forgotten. Inadequate. But in public who shall express the unseen adequately? It is private life that holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone, that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Howards End)
“
Nature,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “is what we see / The Hill—the Afternoon / Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee / Nay—Nature is Heaven.” In the last line, the poet leaps from the finite to infinity, to the realm of the Absolutes. It is almost as if Nature in her glory wants us to believe in a heaven, something divine and immaterial beyond nature itself. In other words, Nature tempts us to believe in the supernatural. But then again, Nature has also given us big brains, allowing us to build microscopes and telescopes and ultimately, for some of us, to conclude that it’s all just atoms and molecules. It’s a paradox.
”
”
Alan Lightman (Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine)
“
And do ye know what “the universe” is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity of energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier. It is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over incalculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity, — a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness: — this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my “Beyond Good and Evil,” without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself, — would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche)
“
All stories are incomplete. Yet in order to construct a viable identity for myself and give meaning to my life, I don't really need a complete story devoid of blind spots and internal contradictions. To give meaning to my life, a story needs t justify just two conditions.
First, it must give me some role to play. [....]
Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons. The story provides me with an identity and gives meaning to my life by embedding me within something bigger than myself. But there is always a danger that I might start wondering what gives meaning to that "something bigger".
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
It is—their unconsciousness. Their lack of knowledge about others. Their not being aware of what they do to others, the destruction they have caused and are causing. [...] Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans. Yes, their plans. The conquering of the planets. Something frenzied and demented, as was their conquering of Africa, and before that, Europe and Asia. Their view; it is cosmic. Not of a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Güte, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And they—these madmen—respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur. […] They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
“
Kashmir...' She laughed a little in disbelief. That's... what love looks like.
'But is it only a trick?' I ask pleading. ' And if so, what is truly mine?'
' I am. '
Her words took me by surprise. She said it so simply- so simply - so quiet, so true. Only two words, three letters, one breath, but never had a promise held more meaning. She turned to me then, and in her eyes, I saw not oblivion, but infinity, and the stars were not as bright as her smile.
'Nix.' I said. And her name was a poem. She tilted her face up to the dawn; my lips met hers. She pressed close to me, and then there was no past, no future- only now. No her. No me. Only us.
”
”
Heidi Heilig (The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl From Everywhere, #2))
“
The first truly post-Christian pantheist in Europe, Giordano Bruno (15481600) paid for his intellectual courage with his life. The young Bruno became a Dominican monk, but fled Italy under suspicion the heresy and murder. He spent most of his life roaming restlessly between England, France and Germany where he could be safe from the Catholic Church’s authority. He was, beyond all doubt, a heretic in the church's terms. Like Lucretius, Bruno believed that the universe was infinite, containing an infinity of worlds just like our own. For him the Universe was God, and God was the Universe. Every individual thing had something of the whole within itself.
”
”
Paul Harrison (Elements of Pantheism; A Spirituality of Nature and the Universe)
“
Because, even if my corrupt body is rotten and wracked with pain, even if all my senses have departed from me, leaving only agony and decay, my Mind is still blessed with Life. And, as in the long nights of my Youth, when I could find no sleep, I lie here . . . and think of Numbers. For Numbers are the bridge between the World of Perfection and this fallen, foolish vale of tears. They exist both in the purity of abstraction, and in the concrete, solid, sinful world. They exist in the ten fingers of my twitching, clutching hands, in the spidery numeric scrawls in Schäffer’s books of accounts, they exist in that vision of perfection in this fallen world, the Cathedral, in its circles, in its triangles, in the parabolae of its curls and curves, a beauteous image of the Godhead as a finite, geometrical and comprehensible idea. And they exist also in pure conception, in the flights of numerical beauty that my mind conceives. Can one set a limit on numbers? Can one imagine where the line could be drawn and say . . . after this count, one may reckon no further? No. They have no beginning and have no end. Numbers stretch out, beyond our human limits, beyond our comprehension, to a boundless Infinity. This physical world, my body, my life, will come to an end, but numbers count onwards for ever, towards the greatest of all reckonings that can never, ever be reached.
”
”
Ben Hopkins (Cathedral)
“
In the beginning, in the end and in between and beyond there was, is and will be Infinity. Infinity is all-that-is and it contains anything and everything anyone can imagine, and more. Infinity is infinite, eternal and multidimensional. Nothing can be taken away from infinity or be lost and nothing can be added to infinity because it already contains everything, always has and always will. Infinity is somethingness, nothingness, both and neither nor. Infinity is also holographic. This means that any part of infinity also contains the whole of infinity. Imagine cutting a picture in half and instead of getting “half a picture” you get the whole picture in a smaller version. Such is the nature of infinity.
”
”
Frederick Dodson (Parallel Universes of Self)
“
Yet these early golden almost windless days were not all passed in anxious thought: very far from it. There were mornings when the ship would lie there mirrored in a perfectly unmoving glossy sea, her sails drooping, heavy with dew, and he would dive from the rail, shattering the reflection and swimming out and away beyond the incessant necessary din of two hundred men hurrying about their duties or eating their breakfast. There he would float with an infinity of pure sea on either hand and the whole hemisphere of sky above, already full of light; and then the sun would heave up on the eastern rim, turning the sails a brilliant white in quick succession, changing the sea to still another nameless blue, and filling his heart with joy.
”
”
Patrick O'Brian (The Reverse of the Medal (Aubrey & Maturin, #11))
“
He had obtained her promise, and from that moment all his life had been changed for him. Hitherto at Nethercoats his little smoking-room, his books, and his plants had been everything to him. Now he began to surround himself with an infinity of feminine belongings, and to promise himself an infinity of feminine blessings, wondering much that he should have been content to pass so long a portion of his life in the dull seclusion which he had endured. He was not by nature an impatient man; but now he became impatient, longing for the fruition of his new idea of happiness, — longing to have that as his own which he certainly loved beyond all else in the world, and which, perhaps, was all he had ever loved with the perfect love of equality.
”
”
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
“
will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes—toward an infinity of unsatisfying and disagreeable endings. The wholly anticlimactic, unsatisfying, and disagreeable news that the Rev. Lewis Merrill was my father—not to mention the death of Owen Meany—is just one example of the condition of universal disappointment. In my sorry father’s case, my disappointment with him was heightened by his refusal to admit that Owen Meany had managed—from beyond the grave—to reveal the Rev. Mr. Merrill’s identity to me. This was another miracle that my father lacked the faith to believe in. It had been an emotional moment; I was—by my own admission—becoming
”
”
John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
“
Filoteo: Because the First Principle is the most fundamental, it follows that if one attribute were finite, then all attributes would likewise be finite; or else, if by one intrinsic rationale He is finite, and by another infinite, then necessarily we must consider him as composite. If therefore, he is the operator of the universe, then He is surely an infinite operator; in the sense that all is dependent on Him. Furthermore, since our imagination is able to move toward infinity, imagining always greater size and yet still greater, and number beyond number, following a certain succession, and as they say, power, so too we must also understand, that God actually conceives infinite dimension and infinite number. And from that understanding follows the possibility with the convenience and opportunity such as may be: that should the active power be infinite, then by necessary consequence, the subject power takes part in the infinite: because, as we have demonstrated elsewhere, what can be done must be done, the ability to measure implies the measurable thing, and the measurer implies the measured. Thus, as there really are bodies with finite dimension, the Prime Intellect understands bodies and dimension. If He has understanding of this, He understands infinity no less, and if He understands the infinite, and such bodies, then necessarily these are intelligible species, and are products of that intellect, for what is divine is most real, and as such what is that real must exist more surely than what we can actually see before our eyes.
”
”
Giordano Bruno (On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds: Five Cosmological Dialogues (Collected Works of Giordano Bruno Book 2))
“
Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn’t have limits. Existence means there’s always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn’t always being some other thing that’s beyond it?”
At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.
“Look, Caeiro... think about numbers... Where do they end? Take any number — say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 — there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger...“
“But that’s just numbers,” protested my master Caeiro.
And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:
“What is 34 in Reality, anyway?
”
”
Álvaro de Campos
“
For here is the philosophy which sharpeneth the senses, satisfieth the soul, enlargeth the intellect and leadeth man to that true bliss to which he may attain, which consisteth in a certain balance, for it liberateth him alike from the eager quest of pleasure and from the blind feeling of grief; it causeth him to rejoice in the present and neither to fear nor to hope for the future. For that Providence or Fate or Lot which determineth the vicissitudes of our individual life doth neither desire nor permit our knowledge of the one to exceed our ignorance of the other, so that at first sight we are dubious and perplexed. But when we consider more profoundly the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things wandering through infinite space undergo change of aspect. And since we are all subject to a perfect Power, we should not believe, suppose or hope otherwise, than that even as all issueth from good, so too all is good, through good, toward good; from good, by good means, toward a good end. For a contrary view can be held only by one who considereth merely the present moment, even as the beauty of a building is not manifest to one who seeth but one small detail, as a stone, a cement affixed to it or half a partition wall, but is revealed to him who can view the whole and hath understanding to appraise the proportions. We do not fear that by the violence of some erring spirit or by the wrath of a thundering Jove, that which is accumulated in our world could become dispersed beyond this hollow sepulchre or cupola of the heavens, be shaken or scattered as dust beyond this starry mantle. In no other way could the nature of things be brought to naught as to its substance save in appearance, as when the air which was compressed within the concavity of a bubble seemeth to one's own eyes to go forth into the void. For in the world as known to us, object succeedeth ever to object, nor is there an ultimate depth from which as from the artificer's hand things flow to an inevitable nullity. There are no ends, boundaries, limits or walls which can defraud or deprive us of the infinite multitude of things. Therefore the earth and the ocean thereof are fecund; therefore the sun's blaze is everlasting, so that eternally fuel is provided for the voracious fires, and moisture replenisheth the attenuated seas. For from infinity is born an ever fresh abundance of matter.
”
”
Giordano Bruno (On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds: Five Cosmological Dialogues (Collected Works of Giordano Bruno Book 2))
“
Only humans can conceptualise the idea of infinity. Only humans can communicate such an abstract idea using various forms such as words and symbols. This is because humans are blessed with imagination. It is the one thing that separates us humans from animals. Humans can imagine because we have a highly developed brain, the cerebrum, with an especially large frontal lobe. This anatomical difference separates us from the rest of nature. So much so that in Samkhya, the Indian school of metaphysics, humanity or Purusha is seen as being separate from nature or Prakriti. This difference is seen as fundamental in the study of metaphysics. Because humans can imagine, the notion of a reality beyond the senses, a reality beyond nature, has come into being. Without the cerebrum there would be no imagination, and hence no notion of God! In nature, all things have form. Each of these
”
”
Devdutt Pattanaik (Seven secrets of Shiva)
“
They pray.
To whom?
To God.
To pray to God, - what is the meaning of these words?
Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent, permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite; and because, if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would end there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence? In other terms, is it not the absolute, of which we are only the relative?
At the same time that there is an infinite without us, is there not an infinite within us? Are not these two infinites (what an alarming plural!) superposed, the one upon the other? Is not this second infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter's mirror, reflection, echo, an abyss which is concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinity intelligent also? Does it think? Does it love? Does it will? If these two infinities are intelligent, each of them has a will principle, and there is an "I" in the upper infinity as there is an "I" in the lower infinity. The "I" below is the soul; the "I" on high is God.
To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, with the infinity on high, is called praying.
Let us take nothing from the human mind; to suppress is bad. We must reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards the Unknown; thought, revery, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, revery, prayer, - these are great and mysterious radiations. Let us respect them. Whither go these majestic irradiations of the soul? Into the shadow; that is to say, to the light.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
To B-major or B-minor: that is the question. Consider that the major and minor chords are separated by the smallest tonal step which is one half-step carrying in its pitch the gravity of all humanity which needs the major to recognize its relative, inherent tragedy which once given expression seeks the resurrection that only the major can procreate which self-expression gives beauty to the harmony of the major which then confirms the whole truth of the tragic minor saga which overcomes the hidden hand of destiny in the great ellipse of being and the greater cosmic void of nothingness which passage of time has sadly destined to be replayed in the same octave of the ineluctable modality of the audible which ellipse with such a simple twist resonates as infinity which is both meaningless beyond all human capacity for understanding but which holds within it the ubiquitous mystic beauty and truth of the pulsing human heart.
”
”
David B. Lentz (Bloomsday: The Bostoniad)
“
Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love – from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter – to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. It is a pernicious habit, but I can do nothing about it. It can be compared to the uncontrollable flick of an insomniac’s tongue checking a jagged tooth in the night of his mouth and bruising itself in doing so but still persevering. I have known people who, upon accidentally touching something – a doorpost, a wall – had to go through a certain very rapid and systematic sequence of manual contacts with various surfaces in the room before returning to a balanced existence. It cannot be helped; I must know where I stand, where you and my son stand. When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov
“
It's never going to stop,’ Malenfant whispered. ‘It will consume the Solar System, the stars—’
This isn't some local phenomenon, Malenfant. This is a fundamental change in the structure of the universe. It will never stop. It will sweep on, growing at light speed, a runaway feedback fueled by the collapse of the vacuum itself. The Galaxy will be gone in a hundred thousand years, Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy, in a couple of million years. It will take time, but eventually—
‘The future has gone,’ Malenfant said. ‘My God. That’s what this means, isn’t it? The downstream can’t happen now. All of it is gone. The colonization of the Galaxy; the settlement of the universe; the long, patient fight against entropy...’ That immense future had been cut off to die, like a tree chopped through at the root. ‘Why, Michael? Why have the children done this? Burned the house down, destroyed the future—’
Because it was the wrong future. Michael looked around the sky. He pointed to the lumpy, spreading edge of the unreality bubble.
There. Can you see that? It's already starting...
‘What is?’
The budding... The growth of the true vacuum region is not even. There will be pockets of the false vacuum—remnants of our universe—isolated by the spreading true vacuum. The fragments of false vacuum will collapse. Like—
‘Like black holes.’ And in that instant, Malenfant understood. ‘That’s what this is for. This is just a better way of making black holes, and budding off new universes. Better than stars, even.’
Much better. The black holes created as the vacuum decay proceeds will overwhelm by many orders of magnitude the mere billion billion that our universe might have created through its stars and galaxy cores.
‘And the long, slow evolution of the universes, the branching tree of cosmoses?...’
We have changed everything, Malenfant. Mind has assumed responsibility for the evolution of the cosmos. There will be many daughter universes—universes too many to count, universes exotic beyond our imagining—and many, many of them will harbor life and mind.
‘But we were the first.’
Now he understood. This was the purpose. Not the long survival of humankind into a dismal future of decay and shadows, the final retreat into the lossless substrate, where nothing ever changed or grew. The purpose of humankind—the first intelligence of all—had been to reshape the universe in order to bud others and create a storm of mind. We got it wrong, he thought. By striving for a meaningless eternity, humans denied true infinity. But we reached back, back in time, back to the far upstream, and spoke to our last children—the maligned Blues—and we put it right. This is what it meant to be alone in the universe, to be the first. We had all of infinite time and space in our hands. We had ultimate responsibility. And we discharged it. We were parents of the universe, not its children.
”
”
Stephen Baxter (Time (Manifold #1))
“
The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows. “You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die? “Or one might take the tip of a pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil-tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become leagues, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity. “If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through that shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
”
”
Stephen King (The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1))
“
it appears various ancient Mystics had a hard time explaining
with their archaic languages lacking the words for detailing
“the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”
the Trinity concept being misunderstood by a good host
the Father is the immutable unmoving Godhead
from whence the Holy Ghost flows to all widespread
the Son, a physical expression in those whose self is dead
God can't be received fully if the “me” occupies space
the sense of individual selfhood disappears without a trace
the higher nature of God is formless unmanifested
from it, this changing world of form is emanated
everything is God, in God, all-inclusively unending
ungraspable by brain-mind and its inferior comprehending
people wonder, “okay, but what created God?”
contemplate “Eternal” or “Infinite” to see the query flawed
All is the Mind of God without exception
including your Mind prior to conception
formless No-Thing, yet Infinitely Everything
yet both, yet neither, for it's beyond expounding
”
”
Jarett Sabirsh (Love All-Knowing: An Epic Spiritual Poem)
“
I occasionally return to some very basic, mathematical thoughts: There are only so many letters in our Roman alphabet. It is then by the power of the math—the infinite (or not strictly infinite, but huge) number of combinations of letters—that we have so many words. But then, further expanding the number of possibilities, truly to infinity, one word (one combination of letters) can have multiple meanings. Further multiplying the number of meanings, even within one given dictionary definition of a word, is the effect of its context, both immediate and larger, which can endow it with, again, an infinite number of subtly differing shades of meaning. Further enriching the single word, within and beyond its contexts, is one’s own personal associations with it, either from one’s reading or from one’s life experiences. And even in one’s own native language, there are a great many words, meanings, and shades of meaning that one simply doesn’t know and may never encounter.
”
”
John Freeman (Freeman's: Arrival)
“
suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like. It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity— distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself. Arthur’s senses bobbed and spun as, traveling at the immense speed he knew the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through the open air, leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall behind them. The wall. The wall defied the imagination—seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so paralyzingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a man. The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser-measuring equipment to detect that as it climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds away. In other words the wall formed the inside of a hollow sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with unimaginable light.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1))
“
A moment ago, when he entered this human aviary, the pictures, modestly enclosed in four wooden mouldings, remained flat and silent before him; in order to wrest their secret from them, he must believe in them. He wanted to believe in them. He stood in front of one of the canvases. Between the two walls, drenched in sunlight, a single hoop rolled towards that point where the parallels meet in infinity. Little by little, as he looked at it, the picture came alive. What it was saying he could not be translated into words; it was said in painting and no other language could have expressed its meaning; but it spoke. He advanced a few paces. Under his attentive gaze, all the pictures came alive; they awoke memories more ancient than the beginning of the world; they evoked the unpredictable face of the earth far beyond the revolutions to come; they exposed the secrets of a jagged coastline, of a dessert sprinkled with shells, as they remained solitary within themselves, protected from any conscience. Statues without faces, men turned to pillars of salt, landscapes scorched by the flames of death, oceans frozen into immobility of the absolute instant: these were the thousand shapes of absence. And while he looked at this universe devoid of onlookers, it seemed as if he were absent from himself, and that he remained, outside his own personal history, in an empty white eternity. And yet that dream of purity and absence only existed because I was there to lend it the strength of my life.
”
”
Simone de Beauvoir
“
my reworking of that marvellous list. 1. Live as enjoyably as you can within financial reason. 2. If you have a bath, draw an inch or two of cold water and splash about in it. A cold shower will have the same uplifting effect. 3. Never stay up all night watching Netflix Originals about serial killers. 4. DON’T THINK TOO FAR
AHEAD. EVENING IS FINE,
BUT TOMORROW CAN
LOOK AFTER ITSELF. 5. Keep reasonably busy. 6. See as much as you can of the friends who like you, support you and make you laugh. See as little as you can of the friends who judge you, compare you to others and tire you (and don’t pretend you don’t know who they are). 7. Apply the same rules to casual acquaintances. If your instincts tell you they are toxic, walk away and don’t look back. 8. If you are low in the water, do not pretend that you aren’t. It makes it so much worse, and A STIFF UPPER LIP
ONLY GIVES YOU
A SORE JAW. 9. Good coffee and tea are a genuine help. 10. DO NOT
UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES
OR FOR ANY REASON
AT ANY TIME
COMPARE YOURSELF
TO ANYONE ELSE. 11. Cultivate a gentle, healthy pessimism. It can result in more nice surprises. 12. Avoid drama about what is wrong with the world (unless it is funny), emotionally powerful music, other sad people, and anything likely to make you feel anxious or that you are not doing enough. 13. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS ARE
HUMAN ANTIDEPRESSANTS. 14. Form a close bond with a local tree. 15. Make the room you most like sitting in as much of a comfy nest as you can. 16. Listen to David Attenborough. 17. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF.
STOP PUNISHING YOURSELF.
IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. 18. Keep warm. 19. Think as much as you can about space, infinity and the beyond. Anything that much bigger than you can be very relaxing. 20. Trust me.
”
”
Scarlett Curtis (It's Not OK to Feel Blue (and other lies): Inspirational people open up about their mental health)
“
Dear Amnesiac,
Yes, your pyramids were raised
Roughly up at right angles
To exert out loud and bright in the jungle
And obscure in darkness the jungle around—
And how many years is it you're living
In fear of the darkness there created?
You’ve your back to the door and the four corners
You’re standing in a room with walls and a floor
But just the same as any other
You’ve stood in in pictures or places before.
Alien in your place of birth, you pound
An outraged fist into your palm, but are
Too over-tired and too much adrift,
Not at home, grown absent in an absent world.
So— your steam engine roared
Across space and the four seasons,
And from conductors’ hands unloaded
Its surplus even to the farthest hamlet.
Yes, your transportations have taken you
Beyond the known horizon, but not any
Nearer to infinity, nor to eternity.
That is the moon double-paned in the window-glass
But could just as well be another bulb reflected.
Afloat, nowhere, a ghost you have become
You having from many hands vanished.
Your mind will not stop wandering, and all over
These carnival streets is too much noise for hearing.
You have withdrawn from this; are living in fear.
You fear death and the chances of death
So far removed you live from dying...
And waking up you find the day is there,
Existing, all-ready, you can only enter—
And looking to the night you see a frontier that's
Cold, empty, like it's a world you've never known.
You've become stuck in the middle of it, without any
Sense of the horizons, and are all the time crying
Too furious for the ruin of your world.
But every thing in ruin must first be made:
A wildfire only burns, transforms
The wood, and passes. It is not a collapse.
Too anxious you’re striving to build a new day—
Every morning only awaits your being born.
”
”
Mark Kaplon (The Windswept Verses)
“
Historically speaking, a mathematical technique known as renormalization was developed to grapple with the quantitative implications of severe, small-scale (high-energy) quantum field jitters. When applied to the quantum field theories of the three nongravitational forces, renormalization cured the infinite quantities that had emerged in various calculations, allowing physicists to generate fantastically accurate predictions. However, when renormalization was brought to bear on the quantum jitters of the gravitational field, it proved ineffective: the method failed to cure infinities that arose in performing quantum calculations involving gravity.
From a more modern vantage point, these infinities are now viewed rather differently. Physicists have come to realize that en route to an ever-deeper understanding of nature's laws, a sensible attitude to take is that any given proposal is provisional, and-if relevant at all-is likely capable of describing physics only down to some particular length scale (or only up to some particular energy scale). Beyond that are phenomena that lie outside the reach of the given proposal. Adopting this perspective, it would be foolhardy to extend the theory to distances smaller than those within its arena of applicability (or to energies above its arena of applicability). And with such inbuilt cutoffs (much as described in the main text), no infinities ever arise. Instead, calculations are undertaken within a theory whose range of applicability is circumscribed from the outset. This means that the ability to make predictions is limited to phenomena that lie within the theory's limits-at very short distances (or at very high energies) the theory offers no insight. The ultimate goal of a complete theory of quantum gravity would be to lift the inbuilt limits, unleashing quantitative, predictive capacities on arbitrary scales.
”
”
Brian Greene (The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos)
“
For, finally, what is the rank man occupies in Nature? A nonentity, as contrasted with infinity; a universe, contrasted with nonentity; a middle something between everything and nothing. He is infinitely remote from these two extremes; his existence is not less distant from the nonentity out of which he is taken, than from the infinity in which he is engulfed. His intellect holds the same rank in the order of intelligences, as his body does in the material universe, and all it can attain is, to catch some glimpses of objects that occupy the middle, in eternal despair of knowing either extreme—all things have sprung from nothing, and are borne forward to infinity. Who can follow out such an astonishing career? The Author of these wonders, and he alone, can comprehend them.
This condition, the middle, namely, between two extremes, is characteristic of all our faculties. Our senses perceive nothing in the extreme. A very loud sound deafens us; a very intense light blinds us; a very great or a very short distance disables our vision; excessive length or excessive brevity obscures discourse; too much pleasure cloys, and unvaried harmony offends us. Extreme heat, or extreme cold, destroys sensation. Any qualities in excess are hurtful to us, and pass beyond the ranges of our senses. We cannot be said to feel them, but to endure them. Extreme youth and extreme old age alike enfeeble the mind; too much or too little food, disturbs its operations; too much, or too little instruction, represses its vigor. Extremes are to us, as though they did not exist, and we are nothing in reference to them. They elude us, or we elude them.
Such is our real state; our acquirements are confined within limits which we cannot pass, alike incapable of attaining universal knowledge or of remaining in total ignorance. We are in the middle of a vast expanse, always unfixed, fluctuating between ignorance and knowledge; if we think of advancing further, our object shifts its position and eludes our grasp; it steals away and takes an eternal flight that nothing can arrest. This is our natural condition, altogether contrary, however, to our inclinations. We are inflamed with a desire of exploring everything, and of building a tower that shall rise into infinity, but our edifice is shattered to pieces, and the ground beneath it discloses a profound abyss.
”
”
Blaise Pascal
“
Time, Light, Space, You and I!
In the spaces unknown and very high,
There where they say we all go when we die,
I fled my Earthly shadows to hide in that space high,
Where I did not obstruct light but I let it pass by.
Through me into its vast arena of cosmic lights,
Where there are no shadows because there are no egos and no fights,
Where all that shines is not merely due to bright lights,
Because in stars too I have seen some Divine delights.
That shine through them in those starry nights,
When the moon is silent, the sun is humble and the stars don't rumble,
I have witnessed sights during those nights,
Which even render the brightest sun humble.
It is a journey beyond the realm of time,
Where time controls nothing because it loses its infinity,
Because there light dictates the values of time,
Where light does not bend because it alters its proclivity.
There, I have seen time bending in that discreet space,
Where all laws of Earthly logic fail to compile anything,
There time obeys just the factors of light and space,
Where to a naked eye only hollowness spreads giving rise to nothing.
In actuality it is there time changes its character,
Because light assumes a new form,
And when new logics takeover and change the cosmic character,
Only then I am able to see a universe in a law that is so uniform.
I wish to take you on these secret journeys with me,
Irma and I, and I shall show you how reality bends in that dimension,
But only if you are willing to allow me,
To let me love you even in that highest and exalted mansion,
Where light behaves differently because time too bends,
I will take you there to steal a moment from time that never ends,
But it shall be upto you to choose what you wish to see when time bends,
Because time and light do not embark on leisurely errands.
So hold my hand when we reach that height,
And do not panic when you witness newer cosmic lights,
Manufacturing time to be able to reach those infinite heights,
To please Someone and to be the cause of those infinite cosmic delights.
Stand beside me only if you are sure,
Because to embark on a beautiful journey seeking eternity,
Is not meant for those who are unsure,
But for those who believe in the Divine sanity.
Where light obstructs time but time never obstructs the light,
Where I can not hide behind you nor you can hide behind me,
Because there everything that is bright is not light,
So stay with me my love and what a wonderful journey of love and wonder it shall be!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
When the center of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" in nothingness then one has taken away its center of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life. Why be public spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labor together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." " One thing only is necessary". That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off scouring of humanity to its side. The "salvation of the soul" in plain English: "the world revolves around me." The poisonous doctrine, " equal rights for all," has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us , against everything noble, joyous and high spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth. To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated. And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honorable pride in himself and his equals for the pathos of distance. Our politics is sick with this lack of courage! The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the majority" makes and will continue to make revolutions it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly" lowers.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ)
“
My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror.
For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient.
If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later.
By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow.
-Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.
”
”
R.F. Georgy (Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story)
“
Even if I ultimately do not know this stone absolutely, even if knowledge about the stone gradually approaches infinity but is never completed, it is still the case that the perceived stone is there, that I recognized it, that I named it, and that we agree upon a certain number of claims regarding it. So it seems we are led into a contradiction: the belief in the thing and in the world can only signify the presumption of a completed synthesis--and yet this completion is rendered impossible by the very nature of the perspectives to be tied together, since each of them refers indefinitely to other perspectives through its horizon. There is indeed a contradiction, so long as we are operating within being, but the contradiction ceases...if we operate within time, and if we succeed in understanding time as the measure of being. The synthesis of horizons is essentially temporal, that is...it does not suffer time, and it does not have to overcome time; but rather, it merges with the very movement by which time goes by. Through my perceptual field with its spatial horizons, I am present to my surroundings, I coexist with all the other landscapes that extend beyond, and all of these perspectives together form a single temporal wave, an instant of the world. Through my perceptual field with its temporal horizons, I am present to my present, to the entire past that has preceded it, and to a future. And at the same time, this ubiquity is not actual, it is clearly only intentional. The landscape that I have before my eyes can certainly announce to me the shape of the landscape hidden behind the hill, but it only does so with a certain degree of indetermination, for here there are fields, while over there might be a forest, and, in any case, beyond the next horizon I know only that there will be either land or sea, and beyond again, either open sea or frozen sea, and beyond again, either earth or sky, and, within the confines of the earth's atmosphere, I know only that there will be something to see in general. I possess no more than the abstract style of these distant landscapes. Likewise, even though each past is gradually enclosed entirely in the more recent past that it had immediately succeeded--thanks to the interlocking of intentionalities--the past degrades, and my first years are lost in the general existence of my body of which I know merely that it was already confronted with colors, sounds, and a similar nature to the one I presently see. My possession of the distant landscape and of the past, like my possession of the future, is thus only a possession in principle; my life slips away from me on all sides and it is circumscribed by impersonal zones. The contradiction that we find between the reality of the world and its incompleteness is the contradiction between the ubiquity of consciousness and its engagement in a field of presence...If the synthesis could be actual, if my experience formed a closed system, if the thing and the world could be defined once and for all, if spatio-temporal horizons could (even ideally) be made explicit and if the world could be conceived from nowhere, then nothing would exist. I would survey the world from above, and far from all the places and times suddenly becoming real, they would in fact cease to be real because I would not inhabit any of them and I would be nowhere engaged. If I am always and everywhere, then I am never and nowhere. Thus, there is no choice between the incompleteness of the world and its existence, between the engagement and the ubiquity of consciousness, or between transcendence and immanence, since each of these terms, when it is affirmed by itself, makes its contradiction appear. What must be understood is that for the same reason I am present here and now, and present everywhere and always, or absent from here and now and absent from every place and from every time. This ambiguity is not an imperfection of consciousness or of existence, it is their very definition.
”
”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception)
“
Things that felt like a good idea at ten o’clock would seem like the worst idea in the world by ten thirty. Someone once said to her that the key to a happy life was making good decisions. But making good decisions was beyond her because she could always see an infinity of outcomes and all of them seemed good for at least a moment.
”
”
Lisa Jewell (Watching You)
“
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.” —Rod Serling, excerpted from The Twilight Zone, opening narration, season one “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.” —Rod Serling, opening narration, season two (and perhaps the better known version)
”
”
Douglas E. Richards (Time Frame (Split Second, #2))
“
Leibniz’s system is compatible with infinite divisibility,
culminating – at infinity – with the indivisible monadic singularity. Materialism has no compatibility with singularities. The laws of physics are explicitly said to break down at singularities. That’s because singularities are mental frequency domains and science religiously believes only in spacetime and matter. Singularities are beyond science’s Meta Paradigm and ideology.
”
”
Mike Hockney (The Forbidden History of Science (The God Series Book 26))
“
Infinity of your thoughts
Time does not seem to pass,
As moments appear to be frozen in an unknown thought,
I try hard to bypass,
This eerie feeling and the war always lost yet often fought,
And I wonder what is this feeling,
This enigmatic state of endless time,
With which I have now been for very long dealing,
A state where time no longer remembers it is time,
Then in this moment,
Where infinity is cast in a battle with finity,
Time remains suspended in an uncertain moment,
Where every virtue exists except for certainty,
As the war rages and both lose,
Infinity retreats to its zone while finity retains its domain,
And time that had been held trapped in this noose,
Now attains its lost state and claims its lost domain,
That spreads across infinity in the subsets of finity,
Then my darling Irma, I love you infinitely,
Because now there is certainty,
And I want you to know, you are my only joy, my moment in time, my eternity,
As time resumes its pace,
I think of you in the lanes of my mind,
And within it I discover our space,
Where time still lies trapped, and it does not mind,
This existence in a moment where infinity lies everywhere,
The infinity of your feelings, your memories and your beauty,
And there I lie thinking of you always somewhere,
To feed the appetite of our love and its eternity,
So if you ever talk to me my love,
Maybe I am thinking in this corner feeding the infinity,
Of your beauty and our love,
To steal from time, from fate, from the Universe, our destiny,
Where you lie within me,
And we lie in this space of infinity,
You loving me and I loving thee,
Discovering the charms of your beauty,
That is where my love I shall be,
If you ever talk to me and you still need to find me,
Walk into my mind, but tread softly for you shall be treading over infinity,
Where I have spread my feelings just for thee, only thee,
And as you behold me,
Do not hesitate to wake me up,
There in the corner of my mind where I shall always be,
Kiss me and wake me up,
Then let me cast you into the infinity of my mind and its thoughts,
And reveal your own beauty to you,
And as you wake up in the infinity of my thoughts,
Allow me to cast the veil of infinity bearing your beauty and you,
Then let time stop forever,
Because now there shall be no need of new thoughts or new feelings,
And we shall now exist forever, and forever,
In infinities impenetrable ceilings,
Where everything is just you and me,
Nothing else, and where nothing exists,
You and I lying in an eternally amorous state and what a wonder it shall be,
Because now there is no identity, I am you and you are me,
And both of us surrounded by eternity,
In the universe where we have created our own space beyond every scalable limit,
And we have become the masters of our own destiny,
With nothing to include and nothing to omit,
Because there is only one need,
Your love for me and my love for you,
And there is nothing to worry about or heed,
Just your beauty and you, only you, in an endless existence where it is only you,
Everywhere, here and there and even that space that time refers to as somewhere,
There we lie wound on every loop of infinity,
To spread with it everywhere,
And believe in the beauty of our singular destiny!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Few words find their way
Land deep within your being
A place which is beyond
Remembering and forgetting
Your mind may reject
But something else
Rejoices in it!
”
”
Amogh Swamy (On My Way To Infinity: A Seeker's Poetic Pilgrimage)
“
Explanation Statement about what is there, what it does, and how and why. Reach The ability of some explanations to solve problems beyond those that they were created to solve. Creativity The capacity to create new explanations. Empiricism The misconception that we ‘derive’ all our knowledge from sensory experience. Theory-laden There is no such thing as ‘raw’ experience. All our experience of the world comes through layers of conscious and unconscious interpretation. Inductivism The misconception that scientific theories are obtained by generalizing or extrapolating repeated experiences, and that the more often a theory is confirmed by observation the more likely it becomes.
”
”
David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World)
“
Most ancient accounts of the reality beyond our everyday experience were not only false, they had a radically different character from modern ones: they were anthropocentric. That is to say, they centred on human beings, and more broadly on people – entities with intentions and human-like thoughts – which included powerful, supernatural people such as spirits and gods.
”
”
David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World)
“
Amazing beauty
After a while, that seemed longer than the longest moment of time,
There she stood in her shy beauty, but now in its prime,
It seemed sun beams bathed her soul,
To make her a true personification of beauty whole,
That is as beautiful inside as it is outside,
And between these facts her true personality did somewhere reside,
And I wanted to locate it and end my predicament,
To seek for myself a new realisation, a new sense of fulfillment,
That of loving someone who exists beyond the palpable dimensions,
Even beyond the known scale of human sensations,
Because whenever I look at her, whether it is day or night,
I wish to touch her part of beauty that FEELS differently bright, because it is always out of sight,
And today when she stands right in front of me,
By diving into her eyes I wish to find her true source of glee,
And when I dived in them with my closed eyes but an open heart,
I realised, it is beautiful feelings and pure thoughts that to her their beauty impart,
Now I live in them, with them, and maybe for them too,
Because only then I manage to love her invisible beauty, her reality, her beauty true,
So, I have a new address of existence now, her eyes, her thoughts and her dreams,
Where I lie covered in beauty’s imagination and its beautiful beams,
And this moment that I have been experiencing for infinity now,
Is our well preserved secret of our feelings of love!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Mathematics underpins the world of souls, ghosts, angels and spirits. “Ghost World” is exactly where imaginary and complex numbers, negative and zero lengths, nothing and infinity are found. They constitute the non-sensory, immaterial universe of mental singularities outside space and time, hence beyond the reach of science. They are totally rational because they are totally mathematical.
”
”
Jack Tanner (Ghosts Are Real)
“
The Discworld is not a coherent fantasy world. Its geography is fuzzy, its chronology unreliable. A small traveling circle of firelight in a chilly infinity has turned out to be the home of defiant jokes and last chances. There are no maps. You can’t map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs. Enjoy. Terry Pratchett
October 1989
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1))
“
At the head of potency of the King, He engraved engravings in luster on high. A spark of impenetrable darkness flashed within the concealed of the concealed, from the head of Infinity —a cluster of vapor forming in formlessness, thrust in a ring, not white, not black, not red, not green, no color at all. As a cord surveyed, it yielded radiant colors. Deep within the spark gushed a flow, splaying colors below, concealed within the concealed of the mystery of Ein Sof. It split and did not split its aura, was not known at all, until under the impact of splitting, a single, concealed, supernal point shone. Beyond that point, nothing is known, so it is called ראשית (Reshit). Beginning, first command of all.
The enlightened will shine like the זהר (zohar), radiance, of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (Daniel 12:3).
”
”
Daniel C. Matt (The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Vol. 1 (Volume 1))
“
Could some branches of science come to a halt because we bump up against the inherent limits of our understanding, rather than because the subject is exhausted? Humans are more than just another primate species. We are special: our self-awareness and language were a qualitative leap, allowing cultural evolution, and the cumulative diversified expertise that led to science and technology. But some aspects of reality – a unified theory of physics, or a full understanding of consciousness – might elude us simply because they’re beyond human brains, just as surely as Einstein’s ideas would baffle a chimpanzee. Perhaps complex aggregates of atoms, whether brains or machines, can never understand everything about themselves.
”
”
Martin J. Rees (From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons (Reith Lectures 2010))
“
Our Baal's flame sends messages out into the infinity of space, but it also sends messages beyond our land and spreads some of the darkness that rests over it and blocks all vision.
”
”
Frits Clausen
“
When spring triumphed and new life burst forth in nature, our ancestors ascended the hill of our homeland to ignite flares. They did this in hopes of a bountiful harvest and a prosperous year, as a blessing and tribute for their toil upon the earth. From vantage points where they could survey the earthly realms, they used the spring flame’s fire to forge a connection with the celestial regions—domains beyond their sight, with the sky, infinity, and eternity, and with the forces at work there. They understood that from these realms, every renewal of life must originate.
”
”
Frits Clausen
“
In every age, there have been thinkers who might broadly be described as Prophets of Doom. This does not necessarily mean that they are pessimists, but rather that they reject the notion that history is an inexorable march of improvement. History is not, in their view, a line on the graph going up and up ‘to infinity and beyond’, but a recurring pattern of rise and fall.
”
”
Neema Parvini (The Prophets of Doom)
“
While Brouwer has made clear to us to what extent the intuitively certain falls short of the mathematically provable, Gödel shows conversely to what extent the intuitively certain goes beyond what (in an arbitrary but fixed formalism) is capable of mathematical proof.
”
”
Hermann Weyl (Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy (Dover Books on Mathematics))
“
He is infinite in His essence, His wisdom, His power and goodness. He is the first and chief verity, and truth itself in the abstract. But the human mind is finite in nature, the substance of which it is formed; and only in this view is it a partaker in infinity—because it apprehends infinite being and the Chief Truth, although it is incapable of comprehending them. David, therefore, in an exclamation of joyful self-congratulation, openly confesses that he was content with the possession of God alone, who by means of knowledge and love is possessed by His creatures. If you are acquainted with all other things any yet remain in a state of ignorance with regard to him alone, you are always wandering beyond the proper point, and your restless love of knowledge increases in the proportion in which knowledge itself is increased. The man who knows only God, and who is ignorant of all things else, remains in peace and tranquility, and . . . he congratulates himself greatly and triumphs.
”
”
Jacobus Arminius (The Works Of James Arminius V1 Part 1)
“
Friends
The divine bliss of almighty is friend
the relation boundless of any trend
friends help us to solve all worries
they wrap up our difficulties as furries.
Friend is a best companion, ofcourse a guide
they have no qualms to make us pride
friends are gems hard to find
nurturing this relation is the greatest task assigned.
Friends stand together in joy and sorrows
they take away all our pain and harrows
till infinity live for friend, for him die
limit this knot bonding beyond the sky.
Distances cannot keep friends apart
they reside in the fugal of heart
never breakup, treat them with love and care
remember enmities are everywhere friends are rare
Though not a blood relation nor by birth
It is the most pious bonding on the earth
for my dearest friends, God I do thee pray
always keep them happy, motivated and gay.
~Jugesh Singh Thakur
Author ," The Craved Emotions"
From:- Pogal Paristan
”
”
Jugesh Singh Thakur
“
According to Weyl 1946, 'Brouwer made it clear, as I think beyond any doubt, that there is no evidence supporting the belief in the existential character of the totality of all natural numbers ... the sequence of numbers which grows beyond any stage already reached by passing to the next number, is a manifold of possibilities open towards infinity; it remains forever in the status of creation, but is not a closed realm of things existing in themselves. That we blindly converted one into the other is the true source of our difficulties, including the antinomies – a source of more fundamental nature than Russell's vicious circle principle indicated. Brouwer opened our eyes and made us see how far classical mathematics, nourished by a belief in the 'absolute' that transcends all human possibilities of realization, goes beyond such statements as can claim real meaning and truth founded on evidence.
”
”
Stephen Cole Kleene
“
Were statues, I wondered, filled with love? Were they enchanted men and women, jaws hanging slack, who'd been flash-frozen by beauty? Had they seen something that had brought their world to a standstill? Were they beings somehow beyond us, beyond our grasping, snapping little world, transfixed by infinity?
”
”
Adrian Barnes (Nod)
“
WW -
I am interested in longing, in longing so deep it threatens to splinter a person apart. I am interested in a profound longing for an unknown existence, or for a better life, without any idea of what the specifics of that life would look like. I'm not getting this right--I'm interested in knowing about the longing that unites all women, all mothers. What is that longing? How could we possibly long for something beyond our offsprings?
It's almost as if having a child allows a woman to see how much infinite potential there is, allows her to see infinity itself. (Am I making any sense?)
It's almost as if having a child does not sate a deep yearning but instead compounds it.
Look, the mother says, look at what I am capable of. I make life. I am life.
But how can I become a god?
Yours,
MM
”
”
Rachel Yoder (Nightbitch)
“
La falsità del sistema Copernicano non deve essere in conto alcuno messa in dubbio, e massime da noi Cattolici, havendo la inregragabile autorità delle Scritture Sacre, interpretate da I maestri sommi in teologia, il concorde assenso de’ quali ci rende certi della stabilità della terra, posta nel centro, e della mobilità del sole intorno ad essa. Le congetture poi per le quali il Copernico et altri suoi seguaci hanno profferito il contrario si levono tutte con quell saldissimo argumento preso dalla onnipotenza di Iddio, la quale potendo fare in diversi, anzi in infiniti, modi quallo che alla nostra oppinione e osservazione par fatto in un tal particolare, non doviamo volere abbreviare la mano di Dio, e tenacemente sostenere quello in che possiamo essere ingannati.…D’Arcetri, li 29 Marzo 1641.
(Le Opere Di Galileo Galilei, Vol. XVIII, Firenze, G. Barbèra – Editore, 1968, p. 316)
The falsity of the Copernican system should not in any way be called into question, above all, not by Catholics, since we have the unshakeable authority of the Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the most erudite theologians, whose consensus gives us certainty regarding the stability of the Earth, situated in the center, and motion of the sun around the Earth. The conjectures employed by Copernicus and his followers in maintaining the contrary thesis are all sufficiently rebutted by that most solid argument deriving from the omnipotence of God. He is able to bring about in different ways, indeed, in an infinite number of ways, things that, according to our opinion and observation, appear to happen in one particular way. We should not seek to shorten the hand of God and boldly insist on something beyond the limits of our competence... D'Arcetri, March 29, 1641.
”
”
Galileo Galilei (Le opere di Galileo Galilei 1897 [Hardcover])
“
The Absolute is “finite” but infinite in its potential. This statement is only theoretical because there is no finitude or infinity in the Absolute without the world as we see it, for the Absolute is limitless beyond the spatial and temporal realm. We can think of limitlessness, infinity, and finitude only in the context of their potential.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
The point where the One cannot be further divided is the gateway to infinity, which is Zero. If we imagine this point is the Plank length, the “point” beyond it is the spotless spot or pointless point of the Being, immaterial and Zero. The Big Bang is the whisper of awakening eternity, awakening ultimate Being, essence. The Big Bang is the ultimate kiss between the Being and the Nonbeing, lovemaking from which their child, the Universe, is born.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
We mostly envision infinity as something beyond our reach and in outer space. However, if it existed, infinity would have to expand on a micro-level within something we may imagine as the inner space. If we say it this way, infinity cannot be only outside; it must also be “inside” with no end to the material universe anywhere in outer space and on its micro-level. It also means that, if we simplify the idea, the tiniest particles, quarks, “strings,” or waves, would be larger, compared to what they contain within themselves, than the visible Universe in comparison to us.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
If we imagine only our Universe as space in the ocean of nothingness, all the physical, natural forces will not affect the rest of nothingness at a far enough distance from our universe. All this nothingness would just be nothingness.
If we now imagine one more universe, as ours is, there would be some impact of one on the other if they were close enough, and there would be a relationship between them so we could measure distance and have two points of reference.
If we now make a giant leap of imagination, we can imagine a macro universe containing a similar number of universes as there are galaxies in ours; let’s say 100,000—1.000,000 or trillion universes, this universe would still have our universe and one million or a trillion more. This universe, at least one million times bigger than ours, would not affect the nothingness much more than a universe one million (or trillion) times smaller. The impact of this universe would be one million times larger and contaminate nothingness one million times more, but still, nothingness would be largely unaffected. The same would happen if we now imagine a universe a million times bigger than the previous one and if we continue to imagine a macro macro universe or a googolplex universe. Even a universe the size of 10googol of our own would not affect the rest of nothingness much more than ours affects it. Beyond the contamination of nothingness produced by a universe with the size of Googolplex larger than our own, the rest of nothingness would stay the same and unaffected.
If all existences or universes were created again and again, along with the new ones, the rest of nothingness would still be equally unaffected and capable of accepting or inhabiting the new ones.
Even if we imagine the googolplex googolplex googolplex size of anything, nothingness would still be able to accept or inhabit Everything. There is no number large enough to reach the end of nothingness. Infinity is simply endless.
All these universes or an Omniverse would be space in the sense we understand it. But space would not be possible without nothingness. Regardless of the curvature of space (and time) or any imaginable physical law, the underlying reality of space would still be nothingness. Space, as we understand it, would not be possible without it.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
No Need for Time Before the Creation of the World
Here is one more quotation representative of the way Stephen Hawking thought:
“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. As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole Universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t 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. People want answers to the big questions, like why we are here. They don’t expect the answers to be easy, so they are prepared to struggle a bit. When people ask me if a God created the Universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the Universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth—the Earth is a sphere that doesn’t have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.”
In its absolute state, beyond the World, the Being is immaterial, and the Nonbeing is an absolute vacuum, nothingness, or emptiness.
In the primordial state of the Absolute, the Being and the Nonbing become the same—the Nonbeing.
There is no time or space in the absolute realm beyond the World.
Timeless “time” is the potential for Eternity. Eternity is beyond time because it is all time, past and future.
Spaceless “space” or nothingness is the infinite potential for space. Infinity is beyond space because infinity is all space, past and future.
Creation or recreation of the World (Universe) activates the two poles of the Absolute.
Creation of the World is the salvation of the Absolute.
Absolute is absolute potential.
The activity of the Being enveloping the Nonbeing (Nothingness) transforms the Being and the Nonbeing into the World (Universe).
When the Absolute transforms into the World, the Being becomes positive, and the Nonbeing becomes negative.
The Being is positive “energy.”
The Nonbeing is negative “energy.”
Zero is the point of equilibrium between the Being and the Nonbeing.
Zero is the passage (wormhole) between the primordial state of the Absolute and the World or Universe.
Before the spacetime continuum, plus and minus are the same: + = –
Before the creation, Absolute is 0 (+ – = 0)
At the point of the World Creation, the Being envelopes the Nonbeing: + 0 –
The Being cannot envelop the whole of the Nonbeing because Nothingness is infinite in its potential.
The Being is infinite in its potential, too.
(+ [plus] is the Being; – [minus] the Nonbeing; 0 [Zero] is the Absolute)
The primordial state of the Absolute is immaterial, spaceless, and timeless.
The primordial state of the Absolute is absolute potential.
In its potential, the Absolute is infinite and eternal.
Absolute can only exercise its potential and power in the infinite number of possibilities and universes or worlds it can transform into.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
He stands alone in a wasteland of black sand, a realm of charcoal graveyards. The black mountain stands in the distance, impossibly tall, a rip in the sky. The forest lies at its feet, subjugated by the peak’s brutal size. The stink of crumbled empires and the breath of ghosts drift on the ice wind breeze. There is nothing beyond the glade and the mountain. They are adrift, an island in a sea of nothing. Black sands run to infinity. He feels the icy cold of the open desert, and he gazes up to a bloody red sky filled with swirling steel clouds. Dead air whips along the ground, and it draws sand up into a black storm that takes to the sky like a predatory flock.
”
”
Steven Montano (Blood Skies (Blood Skies, #1))
“
That’s why it’s called a paradox. In a lot of ways, infinity makes no sense. It’s impossible to get your mind around that type of vastness,” Finn said thoughtfully. “But no one argues with infinity. We just accept that it’s beyond visualization.”
“I don’t know about that . . . I frequently argue with Infinity
”
”
Amy Harmon (Infinity + One)
“
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.” —Rod Serling, excerpted from The Twilight Zone, opening narration, season one “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.” —Rod Serling, opening narration, season two (and perhaps the better known version)
”
”
Douglas E. Richards (Time Frame (Split Second, #2))
“
The soul is part of the universe, possesses the infinity of the universe and basically has the light beyond the universe, so it can ultimately transcend it.
”
”
Ingmar Veeck
“
The appellation of the path as Draconian also indicates its direction; the light esotericism leads to a unity with male gods of the light, like Yahweh or Marduk. The dark esotericism, on the other hand, leads out towards primordial dragon entities such as Leviathan, Tehom or Tiamat, who existed long before the gods of light and who exist in the infinity beyond the divine light. To the initiated adept on the Qliphotic path, the darkness of infinity is a hidden light, so infinitely brighter than the light of the gods that it is thus perceived as darkness.
”
”
Thomas Karlsson (Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic)
“
Love loves and in loving always looks beyond what it has in hand and possesses. The driving impulse [*Triebimpuls*] which arouses may tire out; love itself does not tire. This *sursum corda* which is the essence of love may take on fundamentally different forms at different elevations in the various regions of value. The sensualist is struck by the way the pleasure he gets from the objects of his enjoyment gives him less and less satisfaction while his driving impulse stays the same or itself increases as he flies more and more rapidly from one object to the next. For this water makes one thirstier, the more one drinks. Conversely, the satisfaction of one who loves spiritual objects, whether things or persons, is always holding out new promise of satisfaction, so to speak. This satisfaction by nature increases more rapidly and is more deeply fulfilling, while the driving impulse which originally directed him to these objects or persons holds constant or decreases. The satisfaction always lets the ray of the movement of love peer out a little further beyond what is presently given. In the highest case, that of love for a person, this movement develops the beloved person in the direction of ideality and perfection appropriate to him and does so, in principle, beyond all limits.
However, in both the satisfaction of pleasure and the highest personal love, the same *essentially infinite process* appears and prevents both from achieving a definitive character, although for opposite reasons: in the first case, because satisfaction diminishes; in the latter, because it increases. No reproach can give such pain and act so much as a spur on the person to progress in the direction of an aimed-at perfection as the beloved's consciousness of not satisfying, or only partially satisfying, the ideal image of love which the lover brings before her―an image he took from her in the first place. Immediately a powerful jolt is felt in the core of the soul; the soul desires to grow to fit this image. "So let me seem, until I become so." Although in sensual pleasure it is the *increased variety* of the objects that expresses this essential infinity of the process, here it is the *increased depth of absorption* in the growing fullness of one object. In the sensual case, the infinity makes itself felt as a self-propagating unrest, restlessness, haste, and torment: in other words, a mode of striving in which every time something repels us this something becomes the source of a new attraction we are powerless to resist. In personal love, the felicitous advance from value to value in the object is accompanied by a growing sense of repose and fulfillment, and issues in that positive form of striving in which each new attraction of a suspected value results in the continual abandonment of one already given. New hope and presentiment are always accompanying it. Thus, there is a positively valued and a negatively valued *unlimitedness of love*, experienced by us as a potentiality; consequently, the striving which is built upon the act of love is unlimited as well. As for striving, there is a vast difference between Schopenhauer's precipitate "willing" born of torment and the happy, God-directed "eternal striving" in Leibniz, Goethe's Faust, and J. G. Fichte."
―from_Ordo Amoris_
”
”
Max Scheler
“
This was not the velvet embracing desert sky at El Geneina; this was infinite space. The idea of no boundaries, no end, is terrifying in the abstract and much worse if you are looking at it. The far-off stars were an icy crust; the darkness beyond the stars was more than I could handle. The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky.
”
”
Martha Gellhorn (Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir)
“
Things exist because we observe them; because something beyond our control created them. Absolute Knowledge is infinity. It’s an impossible concept to comprehend, let alone achieve without an infinite amount of time.
”
”
Drew Cordell (Absolute Knowledge (Absolute Knowledge, #1))
“
The toll of the dead had been her business during the war, the endless stream of figures that represented the blitzed and the bombed passed across her desk to be collated and recorded. They had seemed overwhelming, but the greater figures—the six million dead, the fifty million dead, the numberless infinities of souls—were in a realm beyond comprehension.
”
”
Kate Atkinson (Life After Life)
“
to infinity and beyond.
”
”
T.H. Snyder (The Touch Series Box Set (Touch, #1-3.5))
“
I Buzz Lightyear love you. You know—to infinity and beyond?” “Yeah?
”
”
Susan Andersen (Burning Up)
“
To infinity and Beyond
”
”
Buzz Lightyear
“
Filoteo: Because the First Principle is the most fundamental, it follows that if one attribute were finite, then all attributes would likewise be finite; or else, if by one intrinsic rationale He is finite, and by another infinite, then necessarily we must consider him as composite. If therefore, he is the operator of the universe, then He is surely an infinite operator; in the sense that all is dependent on Him. Furthermore, since our imagination is able to move toward infinity, imagining always greater size and yet still greater, and number beyond number, following a certain succession, and as they say, power, so too we must also understand, that God actually conceives infinite dimension and infinite number. And from that understanding follows the possibility with the convenience and opportunity such as may be: that should the active power be infinite, then by necessary consequence, the subject power takes part in the infinite: because, as we have demonstrated elsewhere, what can be done must be done, the ability to measure implies the measurable thing, and the measurer implies the measured. Thus, as there really are bodies with finite dimension, the Prime Intellect understands bodies and dimension. If He has understanding of this, He understands infinity no less, and if He understands the infinite, and such bodies, then necessarily these are intelligible species, and are products of that intellect, for what is divine is most real, and as such what is that real must exist more surely than what we can actually see before our eyes.
”
”
Max Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality)
“
His wisdom and care extend to infinity in both directions, to galaxies and beyond, and to sub-atomic worlds and below.
”
”
Ken Bible (Pictures of God: Sketched from Old Testament Stories, Psalms & Prophecies & Completed in Jesus Christ 365 Devotional Readings with links to 120 new hymns)
“
Often I have found myself gazing up at clouds – yesterday’s seas and tomorrow’s streams – to think of them as floating on an ultraviolet sea, beyond which is the infinity of space that presents so much wonder and so many questions.
”
”
Fennel Hudson (A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1)
“
Harken: I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. CREATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. What is changeable, however, is creatura. Therefore [it is] the one thing which is fixed and certain.... 36 The question ariseth: How did creatura originate? ... The pleroma hath all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness. Distinctiveness is creatura. If we do not distinguish, we get beyond our own nature, away from creatura. We fall into indistinctiveness, which is the other quality of the pleroma. We fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We are given over to dissolution in the nothingness. This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Hence the natural stirring of the creature goeth towards distinctiveness, fighteth against primeval, perilous sameness. This is called the PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS. This principle is the essence of the creature. We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as— The Effective and the Ineffective. Fullness and Emptiness. Living and Dead. Difference and Sameness. Light and Darkness. The Hot and the Cold. Force and Matter. Time and Space. Good and Evil. Beauty and Ugliness. The One and the Many. [Etc.] As we are pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us.... When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, and, therefore, at the same time from the evil and ugly: And thus we fall not into the pleroma, namely into nothingness and dissolution.37 Therefore not after difference, as ye think it, must ye strive; but after YOUR OWN BEING. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely, the striving after your own being. 38
”
”
David H. Rosen (The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity (Compass))
“
One seemed to see something beyond, something vaster – vaster than the cathedrals, vaster than the conception of the gods to whom cathedrals were raised. The tower reeled out of the perpendicular. One saw beyond it, not roofs, or smoke, or hills, but an unrealised, unrealisable infinity of space.’ A
”
”
Laurence Scott (The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World)
“
Behind my words are my hopes
And behind my hopes is an angel singing my death and yours
I said to her "It's the ending of a cycle and the ending of me in your life"
She is now awake to the sound of nature and the angel's voice
We are soaring in the approaching stars
I am dreaming and cannot comprehend it
I have seen the stars
Dear stars: the awakening and the loss, we are born and fall
Dear stars, you too are above and lost and hanging like a booklet unread yet open for us all
Behind my eyes is a secret
I vouched to never share it
I see the selfsame eyes of my mother and my grand mother
And the eyes of my great grandmother, whom I never knew but felt
And so this line unto the Alef and the omega point at infinity
With my eye still I see the light, the crow that sees everything and smiles
And knows everything and smile
We comprehend a moment through him and smile
I see all around my skin and beyond
I have sung one thousand songs on the electric body
I have invented my self
I have killed my self
I am just a form of English words written by an Algerian spirit
”
”
Benarrioua Aniss (Sins of Algiers)
“
Music Is The Universal Language That Can Transport Your Imagination To Infinity And Beyond.
”
”
FAKE DEEDS
“
I become a sword, sharpened in both mind and body, with power beyond any mortal
”
”
Myah Bawadi (Infinity Legion (The Legends of Infinity #1))
“
Though there's beyond infinity to be solved, you'll be always my first bracket , My LOVE
”
”
Lungh Gangmei
“
This journey is a fire. It will consume everything. Then it will consume itself. It will leave nothing at all behind. It will be as if nothing ever happened. Even the notion of enlightenment will to be seen to be absurd. It is beyond enlightenment. You already are the Self. You cannot attain it. You are it. You can gain a recognition that you are That. That is the difference.
”
”
Ramaji (1000: The Levels of Consciousness and a Map of the Stages of Awakening for Spiritual Seekers and Teachers)
“
And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity o; energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over in calculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity,—a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness:—this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself,—would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight?—This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else! And even ye yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity of energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over in calculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity,—a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness:—this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself,—would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight?—This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else! And even ye yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
yama—moral discipline comprising nonharming (ahimsā), nonstealing (asteya), truthfulness (satya), chastity (brahmacarya), and nongrasping or greedlessness (aparigraha) 2. niyama—self-restraint comprising purity (shauca), contentment (samtosha), asceticism (tapas), self-study (svādhyāya), and devotion to the Lord (īshvara-pranidhāna) 3. āsana—posture (specifically for meditation) 4. prānāyāma—breath control 5. pratyāhāra—sensory inhibition 6. dhāranā—concentration 7. dhyāna—meditation, or sustained and deepening concentration 8. samādhi—ecstasy, or merging in consciousness with the object of meditation Together the eight limbs lead practitioners out of the maze of their own preconceptions and confusions to a sublime state of freedom. This is accomplished through the progressive control of the mind (citta). Beyond the highest ecstatic state lies the freedom of the transcendental Self, which is the pure Witness (sākshin) of all mental processes. For Patanjali, Self-realization is kaivalya, or the “isolation” or “aloneness” of that transcendental Witness. The many free Selves (purusha) all intersect in infinity and eternity. Enlightenment, or liberation, consists in simply waking up to our true nature, which is the transcendental Spirit, or Self. HATHA-YOGA The word hatha means “force” or “forceful.” Thus Hatha-Yoga is the “forceful Yoga” or “Yoga of Force,” meaning the Yoga of the inner kundalinī power. This branch of Yoga, which is particularly associated with Matsyendra Nātha and Goraksha Nātha, two perfected masters or siddhas, is a medieval development arising out of Tantra. It approaches Self-realization through the vehicle of the physical body and its energetic (pranic/etheric) template. In the first instance, Hatha-Yoga seeks to strengthen or “bake” the body so that practitioners have a chance to cultivate higher realizations. Secondly, it means to transubstantiate the body into a “divine body” (divyadeha) or “adamantine body” (vajra-deha), which is endowed with all kinds of paranormal capacities. Thus, the disciplines of Hatha-Yoga are designed to help manifest the ultimate Reality in the finite human body-mind. Sri Aurobindo put it this way: The chief processes of Hathayoga are āsana and prānāyāma. By its numerous Asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. . . . By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments.1
”
”
Georg Feuerstein (The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice)
“
The memorable events of a shaman's album are affairs that will stand the test of time because they have nothing to do with him, and yet he is in the thick of them. He'll always be in the thick of them, for the duration of his life, and perhaps beyond, but not quite personally.
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Carlos Castaneda (The Active Side of Infinity)
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A salaried man may quit after a single try, a motivated man may quit after the tenth try, but only a bored man; a truly bored man will try till thousands of times and will continue till infinity and beyond.
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Sarvesh Jain
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What are the odds I’d come face-to-face with the one and only Death on my first excursion beyond the bottle? Astronomically and inconceivably small. One in an infinity. I know what that means. Events of epic proportion, rife with internal and external conflict, are never wasted on secondary characters. I’m one of the heroes. As both librarian and reader, I’m steeped in metaphor and analogy, coincidence and fate, foreshadowing and red herrings, theme and motif, emotional currency and twist of plot. And, like any astute reader, I’m deeply suspicious of the narrator.
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Karen Marie Moning (Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11))
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To understand true greatness, we must understand the greatness of God. But how do we do it? How do we even measure God’s greatness?
We could try the acronym that we use to label our favorite athletes with and say, “God is the GOAT. He is the Greatest of All Time.” But that would be an understatement. Not only does God outdo his nearest contender by infinity, he is also beyond space and time. Hence, his greatness transcends the phrase, “of all time.
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Telo Flores (Greatness According to Jesus: Redefining Success In Light Of the Gospel)
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We are, in effect, persisting in the increasingly sophisticated deconstruction of a world which can no longer secrete its end. So everything is able to go on to infinity. We no longer have the means to stop the processes which now run on without us, beyond reality, so to speak, in an endless speculation, an exponential acceleration. But do so, as a result, in an indifference which is also exponential. `Sans fin' -- without end -- equals `sans faim' -- without hunger: it is a kind of anorexic history which no longer feeds on real happenings, and wears itself out in counting down. A history without desire, without passion, without tension, without real events, where the problem is no longer one of changing life, which was the maximal utopia, but of surviving, which is the minimal utopia.
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Jean Baudrillard (The Perfect Crime)
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And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what’s more, I accept His wisdom, His purpose—which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was ‘with God,’ and Which Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky (Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Complete Novels)