Atlantean > Atlantean's Quotes

“We like the dark," said all the dwarves. "Dark for dark business! There are many hours before dawn.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

“In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.”
― Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan

“the worst men have the best jobs the best men have the worst jobs or are unemployed or locked in madhouses.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims

“Our life is a journey, through winter and night, We look for our way, in a sky without light. (Song of the Swiss Guards, 1793)”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“Ibn Khaldun, though a conservative in certain aspects of his belief, was nevertheless dismayed by the negative attitudes towards learning among the Muslims. He writes:

When the Muslims conquered Persia and came upon an indescribably large number of books and scientific papers, Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas wrote to Umar bin al-Khattab asking him for permission to take them and distribute them as booty among the Muslims. On that occasion, Umar wrote him: 'Throw them in the water. If what they contain is right guidance, God has given us better guidance. If it is error, God has protected us against it.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“It is imperative to realize that Muslim culture is inextricably wedded to the past”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Space echoes like an immense tomb, yet the stars still burn. Why does the sun take so long to die ?”
― Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“I am naturally a Nordic — a chalk-white, bulky Teuton of the Scandinavian or North-German forests — a Viking berserk killer — a predatory rover of Hengist and Horsa — a conqueror of Celts and mongrels and founders of Empires — a son of the thunders and the arctic winds, and brother to the frosts and the auroras — a drinker of foemen's blood from new picked skulls — a friend of the mountain buzzards and feeder of seacoast vultures — a blond beast of eternal snows and frozen oceans — a prayer to Odin and Thor and Woden and Alfadur, the raucous shouter of Niffelheim — a comrade of the wolves, and rider of nightmares”
― H. P. Lovecraft

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
― Socrates