But even further from the light were the cats. Their perfection was alarming. Wrapped up in the precision and meticulousness of their bodies, they knew neither deviation nor error. They sank for a moment, far into themselves, to the bottom of their being; they froze in their soft fur and grew menacingly and ceremoniously serious, and their eyes grew as round as moons, soaking up the view into their fiery craters. But a moment later, cast out to the edge, to the surface, they yawned in their nihility, disappointed and without illusions.
Bruno SchulzRelated topics
bottom cast deviation edge error far fur later light moment nor precision round sink soft surface view wrap eyesRelated quotes
How ironic. In order to avoid the "nutty" theory of inversion, Gaskell invented the even odder notion of stomachs turning into brains with new guts forming below. No wonder then, that later biologists cast a plague on both speculative houses and opted instead for the obvious alternative: arthropods and vertebrates do not share the same anatomical plan at all, but rather represent two separate evolutionary developments of similar complexity from a much simpler common ancestor that grew neither a discrete gut nor a central nerve cord.
Stephen Jay Gould
White
This is the spiritual colour of our times, the clearness which directs all our actions. It is neither grey nor ivory white, but pure white.
White This is the colour of modern times, the colour which dissipates a whole era; our era is one of perfection, purity and certitude.
White It includes everything. We have superseded both the 'brown' of decadence and classicism and the 'blue' of divisionism, the cult of the blue sky, the gods with green beards and the spectrum.
White pure white...
Theo van Doesburg
In Vienna, Modernism had three main characteristics. The first was the new view of the human mind as being largely irrational by nature. ...they questioned what constitutes reality, what lies below the surface appearances of people, objects, and events. ...They discovered that ...people harbor not only unconscious erotic feelings, but also unconscious aggressive impulses that are directed against themselves as well as against others. Freud later called these dark impulses the death instinct.
Eric Kandel
I'm weary of conjectures,-this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Joseph Addison
The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor-not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.
Stephen Jay Gould
