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The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Jul 17, 2023 09:09AM

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

tags: dread

457 likes

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu: With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss

292 likes

“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

tags: damnation, delight

279 likes

“Look at all the life in this," she said. "Every pip could become a tree, and every tree could bear another hundred fruits and every fruit could bear another hundred trees. And so on to infinity."
I picked the picks from my tongue with my fingers.
"Just imagine," she said. "If every seed grew, there'd be no room in the world for anything but pomegranate trees.”
― David Almond, Skellig

tags: cycle, fruit, infinite, life, nature, pomegranate, possibility

22 likes

“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.”
― V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

tags: consciousness, neuroscience, science

251 likes