“The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.”
Source: Anthem
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Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes

“And yet it is hard to believe that anything
in nature could stand revealed as solid matter.
The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses,
like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire;
red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam;
hard gold is softened and melted down by heat;
chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid;
heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold;
by custom raising the cup, we feel them both
as water is poured in, drop by drop, above.”
Etsi difficiile esse videtur credere quicquam
in rebus solido reperiri corpore posse.
transit enim fulmen caeli per saepta domorum,
clamor ut ad voces; flamen candescit in igni
dissiliuntque ferre ferventi saxa vapore.
tum labefactatus rigor auri solvitur aestu;
tum glacies aeris flamma devicta liquescit;
permanat calor argentum penetraleque frigus
quando utrumque manu retinentes pocula rite
sensimus infuso lympharum rore superne.
Book I, lines 487–496 (Frank O. Copley)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

As We May Think (1945)
Context: Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

“He was all silver and ashes, not like Will's strong colors of blue and black and gold.”
Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel

“The Antipods…were always ready to burst.”
Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

“Like a trembling hind pursued by a Hyrcanian tigress, or like a pigeon that checks her flight when she sees a hawk in the sky, or like a hare that dives into the thicket at sight of the eagle hovering with outstretched wings in the cloudless sky.”
...ceu tigride cerva
Hyrcana cum pressa tremit, vel territa pennas
colligit accipitrem cernens in nube columba,
aut dumis subit, albenti si sensit in aethra
librantem nisus aquilam, lepus.
Book V, lines 280–284
Punica

No. 1 (1 January 1831)
The Liberator (1831 - 1866)

“But no clouds in a red sky promised daylight's return, nor in lessening shadows did a long twilight gleam with reflected sun. Black night that no ray can pierce comes ever denser from earth, veiling the heavens.”
Sed nec puniceo rediturum nubila caelo
promisere jubar, nec rarescentibus umbris
longa repercusso nituere crepuscula Phoebo:
densior a terris et nulli peruia flammae
subtexit nox atra polos.
Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 342