Atavism Quotes

“If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

“Шокът е поразяващ за жена, витаеща далече над анималистичните дъна на човешката природа. Доста време й е нужно, за да се овладее. Вслушана със спрян дъх в своите опасни неизвестности, тя още по-остро изпитва вълните от заглъхването на мълнията, осезаеми като ритъм в кръвта й. Това са първите сигнали. Иде, иде отмъщението на потъпканата природа.”
― Blaga Dimitrova, Лице

“Every once in a while, large cities have narrow streets, silent passageways that allow your footsteps to echo in the stillness of the night, and it seems like everything is going back to the way it was, when there were only a few of us and we all knew each other and greeted each other on the street.”
― Jaume Cabré

“We are tossed about by external causes in many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds, we waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate.' We think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are most passive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse or feeling, and swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation because without thought only part of a situation can be perceived.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Within our very cells we carry genetic memories of ancestral incarnations. If we awaken these atavisms to conscious life, we can take on their attributes and qualities. These atavistic powers have been known for millennia as: animal totems, helping spirits, maybe even the Gods and Goddesses themselves!”
― Laurence Galian, Beyond Duality: The Art of Transcendence

“When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything’s hell different. Like I’m in a fresh new world all slick and flat and easy. Even with the engine working up a howl and the wind flogging in the window the sounds are real soft and pillowy. Civilized I mean. Like you’re still on the earth but you don’t hardly notice it anymore. And that’s hectic. You’d think I never got in a car before. But when you’ve hoofed it like a dirty goat all these weeks and months, when you’ve had the stony slow prickle-up hard country right in your face that long it’s bloody sudden. Some crazy shit, I tell you. Brings on this angel feeling. Like you’re just one arrow of light.”
― Tim Winton, The Shepherd's Hut

“Wouldn't it be better to avoid the thrust of the dagger which, I knew, with the atavistic insight of a Jewish child, would in a few minutes be plunged into my heart?”
― Fred Uhlman, Reunion