Ball Lightning

by Liu Cixin

The key to a wonderful life is a fascination with something.

Society was plagued by stoicism in the face of the profound mysteries of the natural world: its existence was the bane of science.

“People like him are suited only to the sort of work that will be done entirely by machines in the future. Creativity and imagination have no meaning for them, and they employ rigor and discipline in their scholarship to cover up their mediocrity.

The entrance to science is the entrance to hell.—Marx.

An astronomer once made an interesting observation: “Take stars. If they didn’t exist, it’d be very easy to prove that their existence is impossible.”

the arrogant demonstration of some mysterious force that had mercilessly destroyed my confidence.

The lighthouse is always there, but you only see it when it’s lit.

The direction of a man or woman’s life might be determined by the era they found themselves in. It’s impossible for someone to distance themselves very far from the times they live in.

Sometimes you fly all the way only to discover it would have been better to have fallen halfway.

Sometimes what we find hardest to tolerate in others is our own reflection.

We were people untethered to our time, and untethered to each other, and we would never have a way to merge.

“Extraordinary research must be advanced through extraordinary measures. Otherwise, in this rigid society, science wouldn’t budge an inch.”

“That’s what scientific research is. Every step you’ve taken, no matter how absurd, is a necessary one.”

You can’t find any new physical laws in life, so from my standpoint, the death of a person and the melting of an ice cube are essentially the same thing.

Dr. Chen, you tend to overthink things. You should learn to look at life from the perspective of the ultimate law of the universe. You’ll feel much better if you do.”

“Are you under the impression that you’re a saint simply because you left weapons research? Any civilian technology can be put to military use. Likewise, any military technology can benefit the public. As a matter of fact, practically all of the major scientific advances of the past century, in aerospace, nuclear energy, computers, and on and on, were the product of cooperation between scientists and soldiers following different paths.

“Swords can be made into plowshares,” Ross said. But then in a much lower voice, he added, “But some plowshares can be cast back into swords.

“It’s not a crystalline snake or a hanging-proof rope,” Lin Yun answered. “It reminds me of Shiva, the eternally dancing god of Hinduism. When her dance stops, the world will be destroyed with a bang.” “Brilliant! You seem to have found a sensitivity for abstract beauty.” “I’ve lost my focus on the beauty of weapons. An emptiness needs to be filled with some other sort of feeling.”

Clearly all of us had a past in those lost times that it was hard to look back on. The war told us what was truly valuable: the present and the future.

from the perspective of quantum mechanics, death is the process of transitioning from a strong observer to a weak observer, and then to a non-observer.