“All lightly shimmering in the heat, these lifeforms, like wonders much reduced. Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay after the things themselves had faded in men’ s minds.”
Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter VI
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Cormac McCarthy 270
American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter 1933Related quotes
Letter X
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: I know that in early ages men did form degraded notions of the Almighty, painting Him like themselves, extreme only in all their passions : they thought He could he as lightly irritated as themselves, and that they could appease His anger by wretched offerings of innocent animals. From such a feeling as this to the sense of the value of a holy and spotless life and death — from the sacrifice of an animal to that of a saint — is a step forward out of superstition quite immeasurable. That between the earnest conviction of partial sight, and the strong metaphors of vehement minds, the sacrificial language should have been transferred onwards from one to the other, seems natural to me; perhaps inevitable. On the other hand, through all history we find the bitter fact that mankind can only be persuaded to accept the best gifts which Heaven sends them, in persecuting and destroying those who are charged to be their bearers.
“Women tell men things that men are not very likely to find out for themselves.”
"Robertson Davies: Beyond the Visible World".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
“All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.”
" The Vision of Sin http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/vs.htm", sec. 4 (1842)
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Symposiacs, book viii. Question viii
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.”
St. X
Adonais (1821)
Context: Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.