Search Quotes - page 40
There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question 'Where was I before I was born.' In the beginning was ... what Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.
Angela Carter
Whence first arose among unhappy mortals throughout the world that sickly craving for the future? Sent by heaven, wouldst thou call it? Or is it we ourselves, a race insatiable, never content to abide on knowledge gained, that search out the day of our birth and the scene of our life's ending, what the kindly Father of the gods is thinking, or iron-hearted Clotho? Hence comes it that entrails occupy us, and the airy speech of birds, and the moon's numbered seeds, and Thessalia's horrid rites. But that earlier golden age of our forefathers, and the races born of rock or oak were not thus minded; their only passion was to gain the mastery of the woods and the soil by might of hand; it was forbidden to man to know what to-morrow's day would bring. We, a depraved and pitiable crowd, probe deep the counsels of the gods.
Statius