Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 150
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone
The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970)
The Stainless Steel Rat
Context: Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I've killed in self-defence, I'll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated respect for life in all forms. Now that we know that the only thing on the other side of the sky is more sky, the idea of an afterlife has finally been slid into the history books alongside the rest of the quaint and forgotten religions. With heaven and hell gone we are faced with the necessity of making a heaven or hell right here. What with societies and metatechnology and allied disciplines we have come a long way and life on the civilised worlds is better than it was during the black days of superstition. But with the improving of here and now comes the stark realisation that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences.
Evelyn Underhill Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1912), p. 506
The Sparkling Stone (c. 1340)
“These two armies, the dark and the light, the armies of life and of death, collide eternally.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: One power descends and wants to scatter, to come to a standstill, to die. The other power ascends and strives for freedom, for immortality.
These two armies, the dark and the light, the armies of life and of death, collide eternally.
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 717.
