Mark

“The conservatism of a religion—its orthodoxy—is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap. A rising religious movement is all change and experiment—open to new views and techniques from all quarters.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a
piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in
twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had one by one,
firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached
Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping
for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now
far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and
occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely
defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together,
in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q?
What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which
is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is
only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R
it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he
was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he knocked
his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn,
and proceeded. "Then R ..." He braced himself. He clenched himself.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“...something ELSE set your body in motion, sent an executive summary - almost an afterthought - to the homunculus behind your eyes ...that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as The person, mistakes correlation for causality," ...and thinks He moved the finger”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“She found the page, cleared her throat and began to read, " 'There was nary a doubt that I had ever seen such big ones, round and ripe. My teeth ached to bite them' " God, what tripe! ”
― Johanna Lindsey, Gentle Rogue