“A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour, and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.”

Themes and Variations (1950)

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Aldous Huxley 290
English writer 1894–1963

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“To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”

Source: Ulysses (1842), l. 22-32
Context: How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

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“Human beings never know more than a part, as "through a glass darkly"; and all knowledge comes to us in pieces.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

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“And doomed to death, though fated not to die.”

Pt. I, line 8.
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