Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
Earlier in the chapter Holmes says that all the comparisons and analogies ever made "would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe".
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
“To be human is a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi
(2008)
“The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings.”
Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
"The Music of This Sphere"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)
Context: The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.
“Children,” I said to her. “For the first little while, they not exactly human, you don’t find?”
Nalo Hopkinson (1960) Jamaican Canadian writer
Source: The New Moon's Arms (2007), Chapter 4 (p. 192)
Paul Davies book God and the New Physics
Source: God and the New Physics (1983), Ch. 17: 'The physicist's conception of nature', p. 223
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
22 September 1907
India's Rebirth
Context: It is the nature of human institutions to degenerate, to lose their vitality, and decay, and the first sign of decay is the loss of flexibility and oblivion of the essential spirit in which they were conceived. The spirit is permanent, the body changes; and a body which refuses to change must die. The spirit expresses itself in many ways while itself remaining essentially the same but the body must change to suit its changing environments if it wishes to live. There is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined by the purely material tests of occupation and birth. By this change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate the material and thus lost most of its meaning. The spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present conditions.
“When you contemplate the universe, part of the universe becomes conscious of itself.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 152
“While I was obsessed with my own misery, there were other things occurring in the human universe.”
Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 21 (p. 422)
Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter
From Diplomacy and Art http://diplomatartist.com/diplomacy-art/, a contributer article for Diplomat Artist, October 10, 2015
