Total Eclipse Quotes

It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

Let us say in passing, to be blind and to be loved, is in fact--on this earth where nothing is complete--one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a woman, a girl, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her, and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to someone necessary to you, to be able at all times to measure her affection by the degree of the presence that she gives you, and to say to yourself: She dedicates all her time to me, because I possess her whole love; to see the thought if not the face; to be sure of the fidelity of one being in a total eclipse of the world; to imagine the rustling of her dress as the rustling of wings; to hear her moving to and fro, going out, coming in, talking, singing, to think that you are the cause of those steps, those words, that song; to show your personal attraction at every moment; to feel even more powerful as your infirmity increases; to become in darkness, and by reason of darkness, the star around which this angel gravitates; few joys can equal that. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; the conviction the blind have. In their calamity, to be served is to be caressed. Are they deprived of anything? No. Light is not lost where love enters. And what a love! A love wholly founded in purity. There is no blindness where there is certainty.

Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

The person that loves the least, controls the relationship

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day!

Earth’s Moon is about 1/ 400th the diameter of the Sun, but it is also 1/ 400th as far from us, making the Sun and the Moon the same size on the sky—a coincidence not shared by any other planet–moon combination in the solar system, allowing for uniquely photogenic total solar eclipses.

The key question is, no matter how much you absorb of another person, can you have absorbed so much of them that when that primary brain perishes, you can feel that that person did not totally perish from the earth... because they live on in a 'second neural home'?... In the wake of a human being's death, what survives is a set of afterglows, some brighter and some dimmer, in the collective brains of those who were dearest to them... Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain... a collective corona that still glows.

He blocks out the sun, and maybe it’s the pain or maybe it’s just him, but it feels like one of those rare total eclipses where you know you’re not supposed to look because it can destroy your eyes or something, but it’s so incredible that you can’t help it.

My world’s an eternity of total eclipse And I call it my personal apocalypse

Isn't it the rarest thing? Never mind the whale migrations, or total eclipses of suns and moons: love that lasts, and is returned in equal measure, is the rarest thing she knows of.

It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and felt Paisley. It smelled like a total eclipse of the moon. Of course, nearer to the tower it got really weird.

They always say that people should give relationships time to develop. That sooner or later a person's real traits will be exposed. I should have listened to "they".

You know how the Eclipse of the sun shows it? Christ's strength eclipses your powerlessness in God's likeness, and there is total darkness on your weakness.

When you're hurt, you feel stupid because you think you should have seen it coming. But if we knew everything that was going to happen to us we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. All I'm saying is, open your mind and your heart to the possibilities.

Earth’s Moon is about 1/400th the diameter of the Sun, but it is also 1/400th as far from us, making the Sun and the Moon the same size on the sky—a coincidence not shared by any other planet–moon combination in the solar system, allowing for uniquely photogenic total solar eclipses.

His father gave him a funny look as the entire spectrum of emotion usually eclipsed by control displayed instantaneously in his dark eyes. Then 'Merapa started to laugh. Dirck literally leaned away, beyond shock as the person he trusted and admired more than anyone else in the entire universe totally lost it.

Nothing is more occult than the way letters, under the auspices of unimaginable carriers, circulate through the weird mess of civil wars; but whenever, owing to that mess, there was some break in our correspondence, Tamara would act as if she ranked deliveries with ordinary natural phenomena such as the weather or tides, which human affairs could not affect, and she would accuse me of not answering her, when in fact I did nothing but write to her and think of her during those months--despite my many betrayals....and the sense of leaving Russia was totally eclipsed by the agonizing thought that Reds or no Reds, letters from Tamara would be still coming, miraculously and needlessly, to southern Crimea, and would search there for a fugitive addressee, and weakly flap about like bewildered butterflies set loose in an alien zone, at the wrong altitude, among an unfamiliar flora.

Wearing dark glasses at the breakfast table is socially acceptable only if you are legally blind or partaking of your morning meal out of doors during a total eclipse of the sun.

I have just been to the home of my soul. (woman after the seeing a total eclipse of the Sun)

knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the twenty-first of June, A.D. 528 O.S., and began at three minutes after twelve noon.

For all karaoke freaks around the nation, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is one of those sacred anthems. It’s the kind of song that announces, “Dearly beloved, we have so totally gathered here today.

The only time I thought of Virginia as being eclipsed was when the sun himself shared her darkening and I saw her standing wraithlike on a Yorkshire moor while the shadow swept onwards towards totality

Restoring order of my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuffed the toes of my shoes with tissue paper, and arranged all the bills in my secret stash box facing the same way, instead of tossed in sloppy and wild, as if by my evil twin. All week, I kept making lists and crossing things off them, ending each day with a sense of great accomplishment eclipsed only by complete and total exhaustion.

wherever Haley’s voice rang out with “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock RAHK…” the gritty drama on the screen was totally eclipsed by mayhem among the audience. Boys and girls alike went literally berserk, shrieking like banshees, tearing at the fabric of their seats, lurching out to dance in the aisles or engage in mass brawls that required dozens of police to contain them.

The first of these new scientific thinkers that we are aware of was Thales of Miletus. Nothing survives of his writings, but we know that he had a good grasp of geometry and astronomy, and is reputed to have predicted the total eclipse of the sun in 585 BCE.

You are the sun. The sun doesn't move, this is what it does. You are the Earth. The Earth is here for a start, and then the Earth moves around the sun. And now, we'll have an explanation that simple folks like us can also understand, about immortality. All I ask is that you step with me into the boundlessness, where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness reign. And just imagine, in this infinite sonorous silence, everywhere is an impenetrable darkness. Here, we only experience general motion, and at first, we don't notice the events that we are witnessing. The brilliant light of the sun always sheds its heat and light on that side of the Earth which is just then turned towards it. And we stand here in its brilliance. This is the moon. The moon revolves around the Earth. What is happening? We suddenly see that the disc of the moon, the disc of the moon, on the Sun's flaming sphere, makes an indentation, and this indentation, the dark shadow, grows bigger... and bigger. And as it covers more and more, slowly only a narrow crescent of the sun remains, a dazzling crescent. And at the next moment, the next moment - say that it's around one in the afternoon - a most dramatic turn of event occurs. At that moment the air suddenly turns cold. Can you feel it? The sky darkens, then goes all dark. The dogs howl, rabbits hunch down, the deer run in panic, run, stampede in fright. And in this awful, incomprehensible dusk, even the birds... the birds too are confused and go to roost. And then... Complete Silence. Everything that lives is still. Are the hills going to march off? Will heaven fall upon us? Will the Earth open under us? We don't know. We don't know, for a total eclipse has come upon us... But... but no need to fear. It's not over. For across the sun's glowing sphere, slowly, the Moon swims away. And the sun once again bursts forth, and to the Earth slowly there comes again light, and warmth again floods the Earth. Deep emotion pierces everyone. They have escaped the weight of darkness

The greatest risk most of us will take in our lifetime is that of repression or denial of basic rights of another person. The great risk is that you have no idea what will happen if that person you think so small or insignificant of stands up and totally eclipses the Sun in the universe of those lacking in empathy, humility, and humbleness.

This is that family feeling, he thought. Of total acceptance, belonging to people. A connection that eclipsed everything.

What is friendship, if not a chance to indulge in mutual self-pity?

For human beings, with our limited lives and limited means of travel, these vagaries of celestial alignment mean the majority of people on Earth have never seen a total solar eclipse.

Before I would fall asleep, I would think for so long that I wouldn't be able to sleep, that even when I did fall asleep something of that thought remained with me. It was only a faint ray in the almost total eclipse, but it was enough to reflect in my dream first the thought that I would not be able to fall asleep, and as a reflection of that reflection that when I am sleeping I think that I am not sleeping.

Every clear night is an opportunity to experience something amazing. I have seen comets stretch across the sky, viewed sunlight glinting off the dust that floats between the planets, and witnessed a Milky Way so bright that the glow of its billion stars cast a shadow at my feet. But in all my life I have never seen anything as awe inspiring, as awesome—in the original definition of the word—as a total eclipse of the Sun.

My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, but I couldn’t stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. So I asked time to consider. The king said— “How long—ah, how long, good sir? Be merciful; look, it groweth darker, moment by moment. Prithee how long?” “Not long. Half an hour—maybe an hour.” There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I couldn’t shorten up any, for I couldn’t remember how long a total eclipse lasts.

An intolerable pain pierced him. He was totally lost without her...estranged from his life utterly, and from the world. This was the world into which he'd been born; the only world he would ever know. Yet nowhere in it did he feel the slightest degree at home. She was his home...his one sanctuary upon earth...the only place of safety for him in the whole universe. But he had lost her...and consequently was doomed to absolute loneliness in an alien, frozen vacancy...at the mercy of something huge, insensate and merciless as an eclipse...For a moment his isolation was so agonisingly intense that it seemed impossible to go on living. He longed only to plunge into the black pit of annihilation opening before him.

Si tot desaparegués i ell se salvava, jo podria continuar existint; i si tota la resta es conservés, i ell desapareixia, l'univers sencer es convertiria en una cosa totalment desconeguda i estranya per a mi. D'Emily Brontë, a Cims borrascosos.

Earth’s Moon is about 1/400th the diameter of the Sun, but it is also 1/400th as far from us, making the Sun and the Moon the same size on the sky—a coincidence not shared by any other planet–moon combination in the solar system, allowing for uniquely photogenic total solar eclipses. Earth has also tidally locked the Moon, leaving it with identical periods of rotation on its axis and revolution around Earth. Wherever and whenever this happens, the locked moon shows only one face to its host planet.

One of the first shrinks I went to after Cass died told me that the brain has a hardwired need to find correlations, to make sense of nonsensical data by making connections between unrelated things. Humans have evolved a universal tendency to seek patterns in random information, hence the existence of fortune-tellers and dream interpreters and people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast. But the cold, hard truth is that there are no connections between anything. Life—all of existence—is totally random. Your lucky lottery numbers aren’t really lucky, because there’s no such thing as luck. The black cat that crosses your path isn’t a bad omen, it’s just a cat out for a walk. An eclipse doesn’t mean that the gods are angry, just as a bus narrowly missing you as you cross the street doesn’t mean there’s a guardian angel looking out for you. There are no gods. There are no angels. Superstitions aren’t real, and no amount of wishing, praying, or rationalizing can change the fact that life is just one long sequence of random events that ultimately have no meaning. I really hated that shrink.

Earth’s Moon is about 1/400th the diameter of the Sun, but it is also 1/400th as far from us, making the Sun and the Moon the same size in the sky—a coincidence not shared by any other planet–moon combination in the solar system, allowing for uniquely photogenic total solar eclipses.

Earth’s Moon is about 1/400th the diameter of the Sun, but it is also 1/400th as far from us, making the Sun and the Moon the same size on the sky—a coincidence not shared by any other planet–moon combination in the solar system, allowing for uniquely photogenic total solar eclipses. Earth

He appears to be pointing at a massive water tower, all hinkered down overlooking the river. 'That's an old one.' This ancient, dark metal thing. It looks like a shadow of itself. 'Wait for it,' John says. 'For what?' 'It.' A few minutes later, the sun slips behind the water tower. The effect is like a total solar eclipse, with the water tower blocking the sun. 'Whoa.' 'Thanks. I arranged that myself.

Vaig necessitar més llàgrimes i més temps del que em pensava per purgar aquesta petita fissura en el meu interior. Al final, però, estava tan exhausta que em vaig quedar adormida. La inconsciència no representava un alleujament total del dolor, només un descans matusser, semblant al sopor, com si fos una medicina, que, tot i que ho feia més suportable, no arreglava res i jo continuava sent conscient de tot plegat.

I have known fantaisistes in whom phantasy was as it were organic and who died of it. I felt in them a kind of mild madness very dangerous both for themselves and for their friends. Despite the respect which all existence that does not spare itself inspires in us, none the less they fill us with uneasiness. For these fantaisistes are usually mythomaniacs, and sometimes their aim is to hold not our attention but our hearts. If they succeed in this, it means that they are neither frivolous nor given to phantasy, but that they appear so because of their clumsiness in convincing us, from a modesty of spirit which impels them to try to appear exceptional, from a desire to enter into our scheme of things from their remorse at having thought themselves indiscreet. This remorse inveigles them into flights, into total eclipses, into punishments which they inflict upon themselves and of which I could quote appalling instances. The world in which they live makes contact with them very difficult for us, since the least word, the least gesture on our part (and which we thought of no significance) sets in motion in them incredible deviations which may lead them even to suicide. One must therefore shun them from the beginning, however much they may beguile us in a world where fire is rare and never fails to attract us.

Samson Agonistes" Blind among enemies, O worse then chains, Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age! Light the prime work of God to me is extinct, [ 70 ] And all her various objects of delight Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Inferiour to the vilest now become Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd [ 75 ] To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more then half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, [ 80 ] Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse Without all hope of day! O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light, and light was over all; Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree? [ 85 ] The Sun to me is dark And silent as the Moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Since light so necessary is to life, [ 90 ] And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the Soul, She all in every part; why was the sight To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd? So obvious and so easie to be quench't, [ 95 ] And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd, That she might look at will through every pore? Then had I not been thus exil'd from light; As in the land of darkness yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, [ 100 ] And buried; but O yet more miserable!

In a sky swarming with uncountable stars, clouds endlessly flowing, and planets wandering, always and forever there has been just one moon and one sun. To our ancestors, these two mysterious bodies reflected the female and the male essences. From Iceland to Tierra del Fuego, people attributed the Sun’s constancy and power to his masculinity; the Moon’s changeability, unspeakable beauty, and monthly cycles were signs of her femininity. To human eyes turned toward the sky 100,000 years ago, they appeared identical in size, as they do to our eyes today. In a total solar eclipse, the disc of the moon fits so precisely over that of the sun that the naked eye can see solar flares leaping into space from behind. But while they appear precisely the same size to terrestrial observers, scientists long ago determined that the true diameter of the sun is about four hundred times that of the moon. Yet incredibly, the sun’s distance from Earth is roughly four hundred times that of the moon’s, thus bringing them into unlikely balance when viewed from the only planet with anyone around to notice.22 Some will say, “Interesting coincidence.” Others will wonder whether there isn’t an extraordinary message contained in this celestial convergence of difference and similarity, intimacy and distance, rhythmic constancy and cyclical change. Like our distant ancestors, we watch the eternal dance of our sun and our moon, looking for clues to the nature of man and woman, masculine and feminine here at home.

Yet, the cosmic view comes with a hidden cost. When I travel thousands of miles to spend a few moments in the fast-moving shadow of the moon during a total solar eclipse, sometimes I lose sight of Earth. When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe with its galaxies hurdling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionally represented among them. When I pour over the data that established the mysterious presence of dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe, sometimes I forget that every day, every 24 hour rotation of Earth, people kill and get killed in the name of someone else's conception of God, and that some people who do not kill in the name of God kill in the name of needs or wants of political dogma. When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, sometimes I forget that too many people act in wanton disregard for the delicate interplay of Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land, with consequences that our children and our children's children will witness and pay for with their health and wellbeing. And sometimes I forget that powerful people rarely do all they can to help those who cannot help themselves. I occasionally forget these things because however big the world is in our hearts, our minds, and our outsized digital maps, the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.

No direct evidence yet documents Earth’s tidal cycles more than a billion years ago, but we can be confident that 4.5 billion years ago things were a lot wilder. Not only did Earth have five-hour days, but the nearby Moon was much, much faster in its close orbit, as well. The Moon took only eighty-four hours—three and a half modern days—to go around Earth. With Earth spinning so fast and the Moon orbiting so fast, the familiar cycle of new Moon, waxing Moon, full Moon, and waning Moon played out in frenetic fast-forward: every few five-hour days saw a new lunar phase. Lots of consequences follow from this truth, some less benign than others. With such a big lunar obstruction in the sky and such rapid orbital motions, eclipses would have been frequent events. A total solar eclipse would have occurred every eighty-four hours at virtually every new Moon, when the Moon was positioned between Earth and the Sun. For some few minutes, sunlight would have been completely blocked, while the stars and planets suddenly popped out against a black sky, and the Moon’s fiery volcanoes and magma oceans stood out starkly red against the black lunar disk. Total lunar eclipses occurred regularly as well, almost every forty-two hours later, like clockwork. During every full Moon, when Earth lies right between the Sun and the Moon, Earth’s big shadow would have completely obscured the giant face of the bright shining Moon. Once again the stars and planets would have suddenly popped out against a black sky, as the Moon’s volcanoes put on their ruddy show. Monster tides were a far more violent consequence of the Moon’s initial proximity. Had both Earth and the Moon been perfectly rigid solid bodies, they would appear today much as they did 4.5 billion years ago: 15,000 miles apart with rapid rotational and orbital motions and frequent eclipses. But Earth and the Moon are not rigid. Their rocks can flex and bend; especially when molten, they swell and recede with the tides. The young Moon, at a distance of 15,000 miles, exerted tremendous tidal forces on Earth’s rocks, even as Earth exerted an equal and opposite gravitational force on the largely molten lunar landscape. It’s difficult to imagine the immense magma tides that resulted. Every few hours Earth’s largely molten rocky surface may have bulged a mile or more outward toward the Moon, generating tremendous internal friction, adding more heat and thus keeping the surface molten far longer than on an isolated planet. And Earth’s gravity returned the favor, bulging the Earth-facing side of the Moon outward, deforming our satellite out of perfect roundness.

Even the heavens are open to the mind of Man. Man alone of all the animals has traced the pathways of the rising and the setting of the stars. Man has measured out the days and months and years. Man alone has understood and can predict the eclipses of the sun and moon for all future time, when they will occur, and whether they will be partial or total. When the mind contemplates these phenomena, it learns also knowledge of the gods. So religion is born, and with it goodness and all the virtues which make up the good life, a life which reflects the divine life. We need to be inferior to the gods in nothing except our mortality, which need in no way hinder us from living well. In explaining these things, I think that I have shown clearly enough how much superior is human nature to that of all the other animals. From which we must infer that such a shape and arrangement of our limbs and such a power of intelligence cannot have been the work of chance alone.

He stirred on her lap but didn’t lift his head. Jerra knew he had to be feeling a multitude of emotions right now, everything ranging from sadness to confusion to anger. She’d caught a glimpse of the bleakness in his eyes before he’d gone to his office. He probably had no idea why he felt sadness for a woman who, for all intents and purposes, he barely knew. That was the part that made him so angry. He didn’t want to care, but he did.

Men as a whole were taught to suppress their feelings and keep their emotions in check. Society conditioned them to exhibit strength in times of tragedy or loss. Darrell was a prime example of that, more than likely having perfected it when he was a child left all alone in the world. She had to let him deal with this in his own way.

From 1945 through the crucial years of 1954 and 1955 and on to 1964, almost everything that was done in South Vietnam, including even a strong role in the selection of generals and ambassadors, was the action of the CIA, with the DOD playing a supporting role and the Department of State almost in total eclipse.

Solar eclipses occur around two to five times per year but the area on the ground covered by the totality is very small, so in any given location on Earth a total eclipse will only happen once every 360 years.

Every high school civics class sings praise to the system of checks and balances within the American governmental structure—each branch holding power to check the others so that no one branch can wield too much—but there is little discussion of the need for checks and balances of external power centers. The awesome power of the corporate sector, which was nonexistent at the founding of the nation but today carries resources and influence that totally eclipse the voice of ordinary people, needs counterbalancing. This notion is not socialist, nor is it an offense to freedom; it is simply a pragmatic, commonsense response to obvious realities.

The outside world was eclipsed from my mindscape; rarely have I experienced such moments of total reality.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

The borders were soon defined, after all only a tiny country had to be established, without territorial claims or even a proper constitution, an intoxicated land with only two houses you can find in the dark, even during total eclipses (solar and lunar), and I know by heart how many steps it takes, going diagonally, to reach Ivan's, I could even walk there blindfolded.

Clay’s quick, light boxing style – ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ – was deemed inadequate to beat Liston. The night before the fight, Harvey Jones, the sparring partner of the young man already known as the ‘Louisville Lip’, presented a poem by Clay. Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat, If Liston goes back an inch farther he'll end up in a ringside seat. Clay swings with a left, Clay swings with a right, Just look at young Cassius carry the fight. Liston keeps backing but there's not enough room, It's a matter of time until Clay lowers the boom. Then Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing, And the punch raised the bear clear out of the ring. Liston still rising and the ref wears a frown, But he can't start counting until Sonny comes down. Now Liston disappears from view, the crowd is getting frantic But our radar stations have picked him up somewhere over the Atlantic. Who on Earth thought, when they came to the fight, That they would witness the launching of a human satellite. Hence the crowd did not dream, when they laid down their money, That they would see a total eclipse of Sonny.

And while Trump’s economy may have seen the incomes of the lowest paid workers rise modestly, this does not necessarily mean that low-income groups were any better off than before. The increase in income has likely been totally eclipsed by rises in the cost of living, a rise that one study puts at 14 percent.

Part of the difficulty seems to be that we educate a style of consciousness which ignores whatever is a constant sensation. Consciousness is ever upon the alert for new conditions in the environment so as to keep the rest of the organism I informed about adaptations that must be made, and this style of attention comes to eclipse the more open and total style of sensitivity that we have in the beginning.

Suddenly the sky collapsed into darkness and a dozen bright stars appeared. In their midst hung an awful, black ball, rimmed in ruby red and surrounded by the doomsday glow of the gray corona. No photograph can do justice to this appalling sight: The dynamic range from bright to dark is too great, and the colors are literally unearthly. (The ionized gas of the solar corona is hotter than anything gets on Earth except, momentarily, in the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, and is thinner than a laboratory vacuum.) I staggered back a few steps, like a drunken man—or like the Medes and Lydians, who stopped fighting and made peace when a solar eclipse interrupted their battle in 585 B.C. Observers more disciplined than myself have taken leave of their senses at just this moment. The astronomer Charles A. Young of Princeton University berated himself for falling into a trance during the 1869 solar eclipse in Iowa and failing to carry out his scientific tasks: “I cannot describe the sensation of surprise and mortification, of personal imbecility and wasted opportunity that overwhelmed me when the sunlight flashed out,” he recalled.

The height of the Chacoan culture lasted from A.D. 1055 to 1083, corresponding to the period of most intense building activity. This period also produced the most startling series of events in the heavens that have taken place within the Iast few thousand years. In July 1054 the supernova which produced the Crab Nebula blazed in the daytime skies for three weeks and remained visible at night for nearly two years. Some twelve years later, in 1066, Halley's Comet appeared, frightening Europeans on the eve of the Battle of Hastings. Another decade later, on March 7, 1076, a total solar eclipse was visible south of Chaco Canyon. In 1077 sunspots large enough to be seen with the naked eye were reported in China, beginning a more than two-hundred-year period of unusual sunspot activity. And again on July 11, 1097, another total eclipse passed over the Southwest. The inhabitants of Chaco Canyon may have been so startled and puzzled by these events that they became devoted sky watchers, investing much more effort in astronomy than they might have had the heavens been ordinary and unchanging.

Rimbaud: Well, as you know, I started life as a self-appointed visionary, and creator of a new literature. But as time wore on, and it took me longer and longer to write less and less, and I looked back at some of the absurdities of my earlier work, at some of the things I thought were so good when I wrote them, I saw it was pointless to go on. The world is too old, there’s nothing new, it’s all been said.

Totality - the phase during a total solar eclipse in which the sun is completely obscured by the moon, and its feathery corona is revealed - is described as an unparalleled experience of earthliness, equal parts weird, majestic, frightening and invigorating.

Rimbaud Do you love her? Verlaine Yes, I suppose so. Rimbaud Have you got anything in common with her? Verlaine No. Rimbaud Is she intelligent? Verlaine No. Rimbaud Does she understand you? Verlaine No. Rimbaud So the only thing she can give you is sex?

eclipse of 1868 even led to the discovery of light that came from a hitherto unknown gas on the Sun, which was therefore named “helium”; it took decades before helium was found to also exist on Earth.

When it is a question of abuses in political institutions, it is necessary to take great care to judge of them only by their constant effects, and never by any of their causes, of whatever kind, which signify nothing still less by certain collateral inconveniences (if I may so express myself ) which men of limited views readily lay hold of, and are thus prevented from seeing the whole together. Indeed, the cause, according to the hypothesis which seems to be proved, not having any logical relation to the effect; and the inconveniences of an institution, good in itself, being only, as I have just said, an inevitable dissonance in the general key; how can we judge of institutions by their causes and inconveniences?—Voltaire, who spoke of every thing, during an age, without having so much as penetrated below the surface, has reasoned very humorously on the sale of the offices of the magistracy which occurred in France; and no instance, perhaps, could be more apposite to make us sensible of the truth of the theory which I am setting forth. That this sale is an abuse, says he, is proved by the fact, that it originated in another abuse. Voltaire does not mistake here as every man is liable to mistake. He shamefully mistakes. It is a total eclipse of common sense. Everything which springs from an abuse, an abuse! On the contrary; one of the most general and evident laws of this power, at once secret and striking, which acts and makes itself to be felt on every side, is, that the remedy of an abuse springs from an abuse, and that the evil, having reached a certain point, destroys itself, as it ought to do; for evil, which is only a negation, has, for measure of dimension and duration, that of the being to which it is joined, and which it destroys. It exists as an ulcer, which can only terminate in self-destruction. But then a new reality will necessarily occupy the place of that which has disappeared; for nature abhors a vacuum, and the Good. But I diverge too far from Voltaire.

His father’s face watching the moment of totality is more impressive than the eclipse itself. How often do you witness your parents awestruck?

Shiloh’s casualties eclipsed the total of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.

But they had failed to consider the fact that his solitude was not total—for there was prayer, and grace, and angels.

The archbishop paused. “Teach your people to give themselves totally to God. Teach them to find his heart.

She remembers the last perfect evening before everything happened, perfect even though she didn’t know everything was about to change. Karaoke night. A bunch of kids from choir cheering each other on. When it was her turn, Hallelujah belted out “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” She went for every melodramatic note, closing her eyes and beating her chest. She got the whole group to sing along. She remembers Jonah taking the stage next. When he sang the opening lines to Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places,” the room went nuts. He put on a cowboy drawl and sent the low notes reverberating through the wooden floorboards. She remembers him tipping an imaginary Stetson at her when he was done. In a week, Hallelujah would get caught making out with Luke Willis. He would humiliate her and start spreading lies about her. She would become someone quiet and sad and resentful. But right then, performance-flushed and surrounded by friends, she couldn’t stop smiling.

To human eyes turned toward the sky 100,000 years ago, they appeared identical in size, as they do to our eyes today. In a total solar eclipse, the disc of the moon fits so precisely over that of the sun that the naked eye can see solar flares leaping into space from behind. But while they appear precisely the same size to terrestrial observers, scientists long ago determined that the true diameter of the sun is about four hundred times that of the moon. Yet incredibly, the sun’s distance from Earth is roughly four hundred times that of the moon’s, thus bringing them into unlikely balance when viewed from the only planet with anyone around to notice.22 Some will say, “Interesting coincidence.” Others will wonder whether there isn’t an extraordinary message contained in this celestial convergence of difference and similarity, intimacy and distance, rhythmic constancy and cyclical change. Like our distant ancestors, we watch the eternal dance of our sun and our moon, looking for clues to the nature of man and woman, masculine and feminine here at home.

I doubt if the effect of witnessing a total eclipse ever quite passes away. The impression is singularly vivid and quieting for days, and can never be wholly lost. A startling nearness to the gigantic forces of nature and their inconceivable operation seems to have been established. Personalities and towns and cities, and hates and jealousies, and even mundane hopes, grow very small and very far away.

The second time there were four blood moons on Jewish holy days in successive years was in 1949 and 1950. Israel became a nation in one day on May 14, 1948 but was not established as a government until 1949. The third time it happened was in 1967 and 1968. The Jews took full control of the city of Jerusalem in 1967 after the Six Day War. The fourth and last time it happened was in 2014 and 2015. And in those years we also saw a total and a partial solar eclipse on Jewish holy days.

with the collapse of the empire of the West—which was induced by centuries of internal wasting and external pressure: of plague, warfare, and demographic decline—it was the church’s monasteries alone that saved classical civilization from the total eclipse it would otherwise have suffered. And, in the East, it was a Christian civilization that united the intellectual cultures of the Greek, Egyptian, and Syrian worlds, and that preserved Hellenic wisdom in academies and libraries in Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general scrutinized the trip because it was planned for August 21, 2018, the day of the total solar eclipse, and Ft. Knox happened to be in the path of totality. Ft. Knox is home to the government’s largest gold stockpile, which Mnuchin said was the reason for the trip. The inspector general conducted

Very good; then here we have it—'4 June, total eclipse of the moon commences at 8.15 Greenwich time, visible in Teneriffe—South Africa, &c.' There's a sign for you. Tell them we will darken the moon to-morrow night.

Solar Eclipse 2017, See it like an Earthling!

Let’s get one thing straight at the beginning. A lunar eclipse simply will not do. You may have seen a partial solar eclipse, but neither will that do. The sun is such a monster that until a few minutes before totality the light from the sun blasts right around the disk of the moon and the Earth is little changed. Annie Dillard wrote that the difference between a partial eclipse and a total one is the difference between kissing a man and marrying him. Just so. So people search out totality, no matter how remote the spot. And so we have come to Svalbard. - from Out in the Cold

He looked totally comfortable that way, like he’d always been a bouncer for the Fairy Tale Mafia in his spare time.

Povera Kendra!” Elisa says, and then switches into English. “Poor Kendra! She must be very sad today. It is very much a shame. She feels stupid, yes? Molto sciocca. Of course, she knows that she is not the first girl. Luigi, he has another stupid foreign girl two years ago. She cries a lot too when she finds out that he has a wife--” Paige stands up, shoving her chair back with a scrape along the floor. “I’m not staying here to listen to this,” she says. “I’ve got better things to do. Like going to pee.” “Yes,” I agree, standing up too. “I think I might go for a wee too. Good idea, Paige.” Elisa isn’t as disconcerted by our deliberate vulgarity as we hoped. She’s homed in on the weak link in our chain, and now she leans in to focus on Kelly, whose face is still damp. “And you, Kellee?” she asks sweetly. “What will you do--cry some more?” “Shut up,” I snap, as Kelly does indeed heave a sob at this. But I’m eclipsed by Paige, who loathes Elisa at least as much as I do, and clearly needs a truly satisfactory outlet for her fury at what’s happened to Kendra. “You,” she says to Elisa, rounding the table with the whirling-dervish fury of a tornado in wedge heels, “you stay away from us, you hear? All of us. I’ve totally had it with you sticking your nose in the air and thinking you’re better than us just because you’re practically anorexic! You’re only dating Luca--if you even are--because Violet turned him down! If you say a word to any of us that isn’t just hello or goodbye or pass the salt at dinner, so help me, I’ll haul off and smash your skinny ass through the nearest window, don’t think I won’t! Right in front of your mama, too!” I think I’m sort of in love with Paige at that moment. Of course, if you asked me, I would totally say that violence is wrong and people shouldn’t menace other people, and that I’d be very sorry to see Elisa go flying through a french window.

The life-world is thus peripherally present in any thought or activity we undertake. Yet whenever we attempt to explain this world conceptually, we seem to forget our active participation within it. Striving to represent the world, we inevitably forfeit its direct presence. It was Husserl’s genius to realize that the assumption of objectivity had led to an almost total eclipse of the life-world in the modern era, to a nearly complete forgetting of this living dimension in which all of our endeavors are rooted. In their striving to attain a finished blueprint of the world, the sciences had become frightfully estranged from our direct human experience. Their many specialized and technical discourses had lost any obvious relevance to the sensuous world of our ordinary engagements. The consequent impoverishment of language, the loss of a common discourse tuned to the qualitative nuances of living experience, was leading, Husserl felt, to a clear crisis in European civilization. Oblivious to the quality-laden life-world upon which they themselves depend for their own meaning and existence, the Western sciences, and the technologies that accompany them, were beginning to blindly overrun the experiential world—even, in their errancy, threatening to obliterate the world-of-life entirely.6

Your story is nothing but a mirror. It will emotionally move your audience into action only when it will reflect a total eclipse between your brand story and your customer's personal story.

Your story is nothing but a mirror. It will emotionally move your audience into action only when it will reflect a total eclipse between your brand story and your customer's personal story.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse Without all hope of day! O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light, and light was over all; Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree? The Sun to me is dark And silent as the Moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.