Quotes about cave (203 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“Dots are just one example of an element in Lascaux art, and in all cave art… This is a profusion of nonrepresentational, geometric patterns. In addition to dots, there are grids and chevrons, curves and zigzags, and more. …The coincidence of these geometric motifs with representational images is one of the most puzzling aspects of Upper Paleolithic art. …images, six different kinds in all, are shimmering, incandescent, mercurial—and powerful. Called entoptic images—which means "within vision"—these phenomena are products of the basic neural architecture of the human brain.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art

“A person who lives in a place where the norms of behavior are evil and the inhabitants do not follow the straight path should move to a place where the people are righteous and follow the ways of the good.If all the places with which he is familiar and of which he hears reports follow improper paths, as in our times, … he should remain alone in seclusion. …If they are wicked and sinful and do not allow him to reside there unless he mingle with them and follow their evil behavior, he should go out to caves, thickets, and deserts.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Source: Hilkhot De'ot (Laws Concerning Character Traits), Chapter 6, Section 1

People , Way , Behavior , Evil

“Earth, earth
riding your merry-go-round
toward extinction,
right to the roots
thickening the oceans like gravy,
festering in your caves,
you are becoming a latrine.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"As It Was Written" from Last Poems
Poems 1971-1973 (1981)

“Maybe I'm just a selfish maniac who is wasting his time trying to transfer feelings which perhaps no one cares about onto a fretboard and a piece of magnetic tape. Maybe it's the modern petroglyph, or the modern way to write on the wall of your cave: "I was here." Maybe it is a cry to God about how much I hate the bad things and how much I love the good things.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Love , God , Hate , Way

“Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

To Night http://www.readprint.com/work-1379/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821), st. 1

Fear , Dreams , Joy , Night

“…I simply don’t want the poems mixed up with my life or opinions or picture or any other regrettable concomitants. I look like a bear and live in a cave; but you should worry.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

of not wanting to write a preface for his first volume of verse, The Rage for the Lost Penny (1940); “A Note on Poetry”, p. 47
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life

“When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Understanding , Madness

“And all that time I couldn’t work. So much of a novelist’s writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them. War didn’t trouble those deep sea-caves, but not there was something of infinitely greater importance to me than war, than my novel – the end of love. That was being worked out not, like a story: the pointed word that sent her crying, that seemed to have come so spontaneously to the lips, had been sharpened in those underwater caverns. My novel lagged, but my love hurried like inspiration to the end.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 1, ch. 6
The End of the Affair (1951)

Love , War , Appearance , Time

“Epimenides was sent by his father into the field to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave and fell asleep, and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when awake, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Epimenides, 2.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Thinking

“Where would one find an answer? For the belief—the will to believe—was engrained deeply in the human fiber. Not entirely, either, in the matrix of the present situation, but in the blood and bone of Man clear back to the caves. There was in the soul of Man a certain deadly fascination with all things macabre. The situation as it stood had been grasped willingly, almost eagerly, by men for whom the world had become a rather tame and vapid place with no terror in it beyond the brute force terror of atomic weapons and the dread uncertainty of unstable men in power.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 13 (p. 101)

Men , World , Soul

“I'm happy in the every day Way
Among the mist and vines and caves
The wilderness is boundless
My companions are lazy white clouds
There are roads but they do not reach the world
My mind has come to rest and nothing can stir my thought
On a bed of rock I sit alone in the night
While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World , Way , Mountain , Night

“Because the art of Africa was on rock shelters, not deep in caves, as in Europe, the ravages of time have eroded most of a rich expression. What we now see is the merest glimpse of what was on the minds of these people.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

People , Art , Time

“One fine day, or perhaps one night,
Near a lake, when I'm sleeping,
Suddenly, the skies cave in,
And out of nowhere,
Surges an eagle, black.”

Barbara (singer) (1930–1997) French singer

Un beau jour, ou peut-etre une nuit,
Près d'un lac, je m'étais endormie,
Quand soudain, semblant crever le ciel,
Et venant de nulle part,
Surgit un aigle noir.
L'Aigle noir.
Song lyrics

Sleep , Night

“No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.”

Peter Ackroyd (1949) English author

Chatterton (London: Abacus, [1987] 1991), ch. 10, p. 151.

Secret , Reading , Childhood

“The Baron of Bradwardine being asked what he thought of these recruits, […] answered drily, 'that he could not but have an excellent opinion of them, since they resembled precisely the followers who attached themselves to the good King David at the cave of Adullam, vidilicet, every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, which the Vulgate renders bitter of soul;”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LVII

Soul

“Before the gods and after, always, are the streams. Caves, stones, hills. Trees. The earth. The darkness of the earth.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“Dragonfly” (p. 227)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

God , Tree

“[A cave] that trembled with the roaring of the deep.”
Sonitu tremebunda profundi.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book IV, Line 180

““Your concept is a tremendous network of inconsistencies.”
“In what way?” the countess said, not very much interested.
“It seems to be based on reverence for the young, and an extremely patient and protective attitude toward their physical and mental welfare. Yet you make them live in these huge caves, utterly out of contact with the natural world, and you teach them to be afraid of death—which of course makes them a little insane, because there is nothing anybody can do about death. It is like teaching them to be afraid of the second law of thermodynamics, just because living matter sets that law aside for a very brief period.”

James Blish book A Case of Conscience

Source: A Case of Conscience (1958), Chapter 12 (pp. 149-150)

Death , World , Law , Way

“I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.”

Langdon Smith Evolution

Evolution (1895; 1909)

“Our progress is a tribute to the spirit of the Afghan people, to the resolve of our coalition, and to the might of the United States military. When I called our troops into action, I did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill. And tonight, thanks to them, we are winning the war on terror. The men and women of our armed forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States: Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves — you will not escape the justice of this nation.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Women , Men , War , People

“Beyond the cloud-wrapt chambers of western gloom and Aethiopia's other realm there stands a motionless grove, impenetrable by any star; beneath it the hollow recesses of a deep and rocky cave run far into a mountain, where the slow hand of Nature has set the halls of lazy Sleep and his untroubled dwelling. The threshold is guarded by shady Quiet and dull Forgetfulness and torpid Sloth with ever drowsy countenance. Ease, and Silence with folded wings sit mute in the forecourt and drive the blustering winds from the roof-top, and forbid the branches to sway, and take away their warblings from the birds. No roar of the sea is here, though all the shores be sounding, nor yet of the sky; the very torrent that runs down the deep valley nigh the cave is silent among the rocks and boulders; by its side are sable herds, and sheep reclining one and all upon the ground; the fresh buds wither, and a breath from the earth makes the grasses sink and fail. Within, glowing Mulciber had carved a thousand likenesses of the god: here wreathed Pleasure clings to his side, here Labour drooping to repose bears him company, here he shares a couch with Bacchus, there with Love, the child of Mars. Further within, in the secret places of the palace he lies with Death also, but that dread image is seen by none. These are but pictures: he himself beneath humid caverns rests upon coverlets heaped with slumbrous flowers, his garments reek, and the cushions are warm with his sluggish body, and above the bed a dark vapour rises from his breathing mouth. One hand holds up the locks that fall from his left temple, from the other drops his neglected horn.”
Stat super occiduae nebulosa cubilia Noctis Aethiopasque alios, nulli penetrabilis astro, lucus iners, subterque cavis graue rupibus antrum it uacuum in montem, qua desidis atria Somni securumque larem segnis Natura locavit. limen opaca Quies et pigra Oblivio servant et numquam vigili torpens Ignauia vultu. Otia vestibulo pressisque Silentia pennis muta sedent abiguntque truces a culmine ventos et ramos errare vetant et murmura demunt alitibus. non hic pelagi, licet omnia clament litora, non ullus caeli fragor; ipse profundis vallibus effugiens speluncae proximus amnis saxa inter scopulosque tacet: nigrantia circum armenta omne solo recubat pecus, et nova marcent germina, terrarumque inclinat spiritus herbas. mille intus simulacra dei caelaverat ardens Mulciber: hic haeret lateri redimita Voluptas, hic comes in requiem vergens Labor, est ubi Baccho, est ubi Martigenae socium puluinar Amori obtinet. interius tecti in penetralibus altis et cum Morte jacet, nullique ea tristis imago cernitur. hae species. ipse autem umentia subter antra soporifero stipatos flore tapetas incubat; exhalant vestes et corpore pigro strata calent, supraque torum niger efflat anhelo ore vapor; manus haec fusos a tempore laevo sustentat crines, haec cornu oblita remisit.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 84 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Love , Death , God , Pleasure

“If you look at Paleolithic cave paintings, you see how people were depicted inside nature, not outside it. It was a kind of dream time. That’s what I’m exploring.”

Gregory Colbert (1960) Canadian photographer

"Peerless on the Pier" in Town & Country (March 2005) http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-131688118/peerless-pier-arts-culture.html

People , Dreams , Nature , Time

“When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Understanding , Madness

““Katniss, she’s running this district. She can’t do it if it seems like she’s caving in to your will.”
“You mean she can’t stand any dissent, even if it’s fair.””

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Gale Hawthorne and Katniss Everdeen (pp. 63-64)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

“The first era of the Upper Paleolithic, the Aurignacian, is notable for several reasons, one of which is the absence of painted caves. …One of the most evocative pieces from this era, from the Abri Blanchard in southwestern France, is a flute. Music must have been an integral part of Upper Paleolithic life too.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Life , Music , Parting , Painting

“Our country is wallowing in a miasma of political and class conflict, of greed and special interest, with regard to budget deficits, inflation and rising unemployment, the threats of both a bloody war and a devastating recession. How did we get into this mess? Because the press, during the 1980s committed one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. The media took a dive, caved in, and did not tell the American people the price they would eventually pay for Reaganomics.”

Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American journalist

while accepting the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism from the University of South Dakota in 1990.
Quoington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?"

War , People , Country

“The earth was parched, the trees were sear'd,
And blasted every branch appear'd;
At one end yawned a gloomy cave,
Black, as its mouth were that of the grave;
And dark, as if the waters of death
Were in its depths, rose a well beneath.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Ring
The Golden Violet (1827)

Death , Tree , Water

“As for me, I delight in the every day Way
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves
Here in the wilderness I am completely free
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever
There are roads, but they do not reach the world
Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts
On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night
While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

World , Way , Mountain , Night

“The right hon. Gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his great grief by his actions—who has retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam—and he has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1866/mar/13/adjourned-debate-second-night in the House of Commons (13 March 1866).
1860s

“Why would the oldest tree on earth be less than 4,400 years old (and still growing)? Why would the oldest coral reef on earth (Great Barrier Reef in Australia) be less than 4,400 years old? Why would the largest cave formations be dated at less than 4,400 years old? Why would the oldest records of capital punishment, farming, writing, husbandry, and metallurgy be less than 4,400 years old? Why would the oldest known civilizations be advanced and appear to have sprung up out of nowhere? It’s almost as if very intelligent people coming from a stock of people getting off Noah’s ark who already had knowledge of scores of things just moved into an area and developed a civilization in a short time. There is no evidence of “upward advancement from apelike creatures to hunter-gatherers,” as books often teach. After the Flood it was sort of like a Gilligan’s Island situation. The people were very smart, but it would take a while to rebuild civilization after a global flood. The first settlers coming off the ark would be in an automatic “Stone Age” because it’s faster to make stone tools than steel ones.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 40

People , Books , Age , Intelligence

“The first major discovery of prehistoric art was the Spanish cave of Altamira, which, like Lascaux, is one of the most spectacular examples of Upper Paleolithic art yet known.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art

“Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Fate of Man, ch. 26 (1939)

Disease

“Nothing of value is free. It is very easy, Mr. Chairman, to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)

People

“Where do you go when hard times hit? Most of the time, our tendency is to enter our internal cave…we naturally shut down, withdraw from it all, and try to figure things out on our own, reemerging from life when we have some sense of centeredness.”

John Townsend (1952) Canadian clinical psychologist and author

Where Is God (2009, Thomas Nelson publishers)

Life , Nature , Sense , Time

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: Of the Training of Black Men

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Third Part, Chapter 36, p. 226 (See also: Glossolalia)
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Sense , Time , Madness

“Utu, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Hero, 's son, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Utu, you have let me come up into the mountains in the company of my brothers. In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer! Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value, my mother is not here to say "Alas, my child!" My brother is not here to say "Alas, my brother!" … Don't make me flow away like water in a violent death! Don't make me eat saltpetre as if it were barley! Don't make me fall like a throw-stick somewhere in the desert unknown to me! Afflicted with a name which excites my brothers' scorn, let me be ill no longer! Afflicted with the derision of my comrades, let me be ill no longer! Let me not come to an end in the mountains like a weakling!”

Lugalbanda

In Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.1#

Death , Mountain , Affliction , Water

“But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. V, ch. 7
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

Way

“The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form. The mystery of the hole – the mysterious fascination of caves in hill sides and cliffs.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, The sculptor speaks' (1937), p. 251

“Imagine a book of unexplained mysteries written by a contemporary of Shakespeare. It might include the mystery of the falling stars that sweep through the sky foretelling disaster; the mystery of the Kraken, the giant sea devil with 50-foot tentacles; the mystery of monster bones, sometimes found in caves or on beaches. Such a book would be a curious mixture of truth and absurdity, fact and legend. We would all feel superior as we turned its pages and murmured: "Of course, they didn't know about comets and giant squids and dinosaurs." If this book should happen to find its way into the hands of our remote descendants, they may smile pityingly and say: "It's incredible to think that they knew nothing about epsilon fields or multiple psychic feedback or cross gravitational energies. They didn't even know about the ineluctability of time."”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

But let us hope that such a descendant is in a charitable mood, and might add: "And yet they managed to ask a few of the right questions."
Source: Enigmas and Mysteries (1976), p. 142

Truth , Books , Smile , Hope

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

History , Star , Problem , Light

“Well says the proverb, that it is better to live with wild beasts in caves, than in the same house with a cross-grained and quarrelsome woman.”

Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) Italian poet and litterateur

(Ben dice il proverblo ch’) egli è megllo abitare colle fiere in le spilonche, che avere in casa una femmina litlgiosa e perversa.
Act I., Scene II. — (Lucido Tolto).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 297.
I Lucidi (published 1549)

Housing

“We have to put pressure on countries that are misusing our policies. Taking a strong stand, looking back to, I think it was Roosevelt who said, ‘walk softly, and carry a big stick.’ Well, you’ve got to do that economically as well. You’ve got to stand up for your rights. You can’t cave to foreign countries and say, ‘we’ll take all our missiles down if you take your missiles down,’ and turn around and let them develop their missiles. In other words, you got to trust and verify—but I think verify first.”

Roy Moore (1947) American former judge

Breitbart News Interview (2017)

Thinking , Strong , Country

“In Castleford, where I was born, there are what are called sand holes. They are caves where the sand has been excavated and they run into the side of certain hillsides, quite a long distance, and you can get lost in them. Now these had a fascination for me, and as boys we would take a reel of cotton many yards long and go into the caves. But one wouldn't go further than the cotton because it was dark. You wouldn't know your way back. In those days there weren't flash lamps, so one only had a match or something, and the matches were these brimstone matches. And the caves always had this fascination for me, these holes did. Digging into something always had this fascination for me. So I think it's not so much Archipenko, because the Archipenko hole is a decorative one. I mean he makes a hole in a breast instead of a fullness, but the hole acts the same.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1970 and later
Source: The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 378

Way , Boy , Thinking

“When supper time came the old cook came on deck saying "Fellas its too rough to feed ya"
When at 7:00 pm the main hatch way caved in he said "Fellas its been good to know ya"
The captain wired in, he had water coming in and the big ship and crew was in peril
When latter that night when her lights went outta sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?…
And all that remains is the faces and names of the wives and the sons and the daughters…”

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Track 2, Reprise Get the kleenex now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw
Summertime Dream (1976)

Love , God , Way , Light

“There must surely be a few bodybuilders who are not idiots. But if so, they are well camouflaged in some undiscovered cave.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

“And so, as they kept coming together in greater numbers into one place, finding themselves naturally gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendor of the starry firmament, and also in being able to do with ease whatever they chose with their hands and fingers, they began in that first assembly to construct shelters. Some made them of green boughs, others dug caves on mountain sides, and some, in imitation of the nests of swallows and the way they built, made places of refuge out of mud and twigs. Next, by observing the shelters of others and adding new details to their own inceptions they constructed better and better kinds of huts as time went on.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 2

Way , Mountain , Nature , Time

“One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

“There is no reason why someone who is in doubt about the existence of God should not pray for help and guidance on this topic as in other matters. Some find something comic in the idea of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts. It is surely no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift in the ocean, trapped if a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen.”

Anthony Kenny (1931) British philosopher

The God of the Philosophers (1979), p. 129

God , Idea , Help

“Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wildflowers.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) Chilean author

La literatura es un vasto bosque y las obras maestras son los lagos, los árboles inmensos o extrañísimos, las elocuentes flores preciosas o las escondidas grutas, pero un bosque también está compuesto por árboles comunes y corrientes, por yerbazales, por charcos, por plantas parásitas, por hongos y por florecillas silvestres.
2666: A Novel (2008)

Love , Flowers , Literature , Tree

“Rough wind, the moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, —
Wail, for the world's wrong!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Dirge http://poetryarchive.bravepages.com/RSTU_poets/shelley_percy.b.htm#dirge (1821)

World , Sadness , Tear , Night

“Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through discipline and conformity — such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

Life , People , Age , World

“Everything can be a trap. A hermit goes to a cave to get out of all worldly attachments and then gets attach to the cave. If we miss the point, then everything becomes a trap.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: The Path to Enlightenment is not a Highway, 1996, Bondage, p.15

“Hence, loathèd Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 1

“Well, Plato's cave is full of freaks
Demanding refunds for the things they've seen
I wish they could believe
In all the things that never made the screen”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Inaudible Melodies.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

“The famous palaeolithic paintings found in caves such as that at Lascaux in the Dordogne have been interpreted as evidence that, at least implicitly people were operating 20,000 or more years ago with teleological intent in terms of past, present, and future. It may well be that those responsible for the so-called 'Dancing Sorcerer' …may have felt that the actual performance of the dance was insufficient, since they were concerned with the magical efficacy of the dance after it ended.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

People , Past , Future , Dance

“Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb were not and never will be Jewish sites.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "'Rachel's Tomb was never Jewish'" http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=170394, Al Wattan (March 7, 2010)

“We must have the courage of men and be strong. But the will to resistance of a volk/people is linked to the kind of leadership which he chooses for himself. If he has the will to resistance, he searches for strong leadership and not weak leadership. If you want to be victorious, you have to be prepared to follow leaders who are not prepared to cave in.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

Verwoerd in 1963, as quoted and translated by J. J. Venter in H.F. Verwoerd: Foundational aspects of his thought, Koers 64(4) 1999: 415–442

Men , People , Search , Courage

“If a lack of money had prevented people from improving their lot, then mankind would still be living in the caves: unless you believe that investment capital first arrived from outer space.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Theodore Dalrymple remembers Ken Saro-Wiwa - and asks, if unearned income from oil has done so much harm to Nigeria, will increased unearned aid flows not do similar harm to Africa as a whole? http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000708.php (January 3, 2006).
The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

Money , People

“On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Low Barometer http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2934.html, st. 2 (1926).
Poetry

Life , God , Night

“After nearly a quarter of a century of prosperity under the Constitution, the spirit of slavery so far triumphed over the early principles and practices of the government that, in 1812, South Carolina and her followers in Congress succeeded in inserting the word 'white' in the suffrage clause of the act establishing a territorial government for Missouri. One by one the Slave States, and many of the free States, gave way before the crusade of slavery against negro citizenship. In 1817, Connecticut caught the infection, and in her constitution she excluded the negro from the ballot-box. In every other New England State his ancient right of suffrage has remained and still remains undisturbed. Free negroes voted in Maryland till 1833; in North Carolina, till 1835; in ennsylvania, till 1838. It was the boast of Cave Johnson of Tennessee that he owed his election to Congress in 1828 to the free negroes who worked in his mills. They were denied the suffrage in 1834, under the new constitution of Tennessee, by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-three. As new States were formed, their constitutions for the most part excluded the negro from citizenship. Then followed the shameful catalogue of black laws; expatriation and ostracism in every form, which have so deeply disgraced the record of legislation in many of the States.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Law , Way , Parting , Box

“If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures : My Life with Autism (Expanded Edition).Westminster, MD, USA: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006.

Men

“The ability and the desire to transmit knowhow, intention, and insight to others around us have co-evolved with humanity itself. Mixed reality is a huge milestone in that human project of record keeping, perspective sharing, empathising, and merging with the ‘other’, a project that began with the first cave painting, or even earlier.”

Anand Gandhi (1980) Indian film director

"‘Cost of Coal’, India’s first documentary in VR" in The Hindu (16 July 2016) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/cost-of-coal-indias-first-documentary-in-vr/article8856593.ece

Reality , Painting

“We need to send the message that anyone who orders suicide bombings against Americans, or protects those who do, commits suicide himself. And U. S. marines will search every cave in Afghanistan to make that principle stick. You order, you die — absolutely, positively, you die.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

New York Times (6 January 2002) "Someone Tell the Kids".

Search , Suicide

“The moon, full orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave…”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Da Lua os claros raios rutilavam...
Stanza 58 line 1 (as translated by William Julius Mickle). Compare:
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
Over heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light...
Homer, The Iliad, VIII. 551–555 (tr. Alexander Pope)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto I

Love

“Everything was plugged in and should’ve been working, but it gave me a communication error. I got like a cave man and got so mad at it. I was completely fed up. I’m not an engineer, I’m not a computer whiz. I don’t know anything about electronics. All I know is that I want this thing to make noise, I want to write music, and it’s not working.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

About using 4 track tape decks compared to GarageBand
Apple Pro Profiles

Music , Error , Communication , Madness

“Pure as the snow the summer sun
Never at noon hath look'd upon, —
Deep, as is the diamond wave,
Hidden in the desart cave, —
Changeless, as the greenest leaves
Of the wreath the cypress weaves, —
Hopeless, often, when most fond,
Without hope or fear beyond
Its own pale fidelity, —
And this woman's love can be!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Fear , Hope , Sun

“Why haven't they got cameras? The officials can speak to each other easily enough now. Why aren't we using laptops that are linked up and can give a decision in five seconds? A chimpanzee could do it - with not much training. We might as well go back to being cavemen, grab our girl by the hair, drag her into the cave whether she wants to come in or not because we may as well live in that age. We've come forward, haven't we?”

Ian Holloway (1963) English association football player and manager

Sport Quotes of the Week, Charles, Chris, 2009-10-14, BBC Sport, 2009-10-14, Quotez http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/8302454.stm,
Sourced quotes

Age , Girl , Decision , Training

“When I was building Kenchi Ashram, which is in Nainital District, I was told by the villagers that Hariakhan Maharaj used to live in a cave there. I preserved that cave, which is behind Hanuman Temple at Kenchi.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Hariakhan Baba: Known, Unknown, 1975, p.79

“War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

War

“Particularly in the case of all professional of press-images which testify of the real events. In making reality, even the most violent, emerge to the visible, it makes the real substance disappear. It is like the Myth of Eurydice : when Orpheus turns around to look at her, she vanishes and returns to hell. That is why, the more exponential the marketing of images is growing the more fantastically grows the indifference towards the real world. Finally, the real world becomes a useless function, a collection of phantom shapes and ghost events. We are not far from the silhouettes on the walls of the cave of Plato.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

New millennium

World , Hell , Reality , Indifference

“Boys and girls don't pair off at birth and scurry off to a dank cave together. Humans have always been social animals. We live in cooperative groups. Our bodies sort us out into groups of males or females. We interact socially as members of one group or the other. These groups aren't arbitrary or cultural- they're basic and biological. Males have to negotiate male and female groups as males. Males aren't simply reacting to female groups as males. We react to other males, as males. Who we are has a lot to do with how we see ourselves in relationship to other males, as members of the male group.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 1
The Way of Men (2012)

Girl , Boy , Birth , Animals

“Ignite the flares, connect the phones, wind all the clocks;
the sun goes rusty like a medal in its box -
collect it from the loft. Peg out the stars,
replace the bulbs of Jupiter and Mars.
A man like that takes something with him when he dies,
but he has wept the coins that rested on his eyes,
eased out the stopper from the mouthpiece of the cave,
exhumed his own white body from the grave.”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

'*', from Book Of Matches.

Star , Sun , Box

“They shaved my head and took layers of skin from my scalp. To heal the wounds, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes twice daily for four days. It’s claustrophobic. One of my first nights home, I watched ‘Iron Man’ with friends. In the scene where Robert Downey Jr. comes out of the cave with a blowtorch, my whole body cringed. That night, I had a nightmare someone spilled fuel on me and was trying to light me on fire. I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to happen forever?”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM talks about plane crash http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/2008/10/16/dj-am-opens-up-about-the-plane-crash-that-nearly-took-his-life/ People Magazine. October 2008.

God , Home , Light , Night

“The French archeologists Iégor Reznikoff and Michael Dauvois conducted detailed surveys of three decorated caves in the Ariège region of southwest France. …they moved slowly through the caves, stopping repeatedly to test the resonance of each section… spanning three octaves… those areas with highest resonance were also those most likely to harbor a painting or engraving. …a fascinating discovery that… Chris Scarre commented at the time, draws "new attention to the likely importance of music and singing in the rituals of our early ancestors."”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Music , Singing , Time , Drawing

“Ascended Kynthos alone, the cave of Apollo – half-way magnificent and majestic. A pool with fine fig trees nearby full of giant (sacred?) toads – leaping and barking. Also green frogs.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

1961 - 1975

Way , Tree

“Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor dayworker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Lie , Soul , Despair

“We do not really know why the Woolly Mammoth became extinct. Early Man killed some of them, of course. But most of the time Early Man stayed right in his cave, holding hands with Early Woman. I wouldn't know what the Woolly Mammoth did about that sort of thing. Not nearly enough, I suspect.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Woolly Mammoth
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Time

“That darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 9, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“!-- His whinny was sweeter
Than Orpheus' lyre.
The wing on his shoulder
Was brighter than fire. --> His tail was a fountain.
His nostrils were caves.
His mane and his forelock
Were musical waves.
He neighed like a trumpet.
He cooed like a dove.
He was stronger than terror
And swifter than love.”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Pegasus, St. 2, p. 181
The New Book of Days (1961)

Love , Music

“The moon, full-orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o'er the glistening waves, and quivering play;
Around her, glittering on the heaven's arched brow,
Unnumbered stars, enclosed in azure, glow,
Thick as the dew-drops of the April dawn,
Or May-flowers crowding o'er the daisy lawn;
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The masts' tall shadows tremble o'er the deep;
The peaceful winds a holy silence keep;
The watchman's carol, echoed from the prows,
Alone, at times, awakes the still repose.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Book I, lines 417–430 (pp. 23–24)
The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: an Epic Poem (1776)

Love , Peace , Star , Flowers

“Unless you work in a cave as a solitary hermit, your entire working life will involve connecting with various people”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.60
Context: Unless you work in a cave as a solitary hermit, your entire working life will involve connecting with various people... Do not wait until you have a particular issue or problem before re-connecting with someone.

Life , People

“Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery.”

Robert Graves book The Greek Myths

Volume 1, Introduction.
The Greek Myths (1955)
Context: Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery.

Men , Fear

“The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Introduction
The Culture of Cities (1938)
Context: The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Nature

“If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Issue (1908)
Context: If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.
Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.

Intelligence

“Puppets really are the origin of theater. Even the shadow on the wall of Plato's cave was a puppet. The very first actor was some kind of hand creating some kind of animal.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Academy of Achievement interview (2006)
Context: You know, we still hear the word "puppet" and we get this nauseating image of some kind of Muppet or something. Puppets really are the origin of theater. Even the shadow on the wall of Plato's cave was a puppet. The very first actor was some kind of hand creating some kind of animal.

Animals

“I have known silence: the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Letter to his fiancée Lee, (31 July 1978), published in Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999)
Context: I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. … I have known silence: the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.
I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. … I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills fling home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their winds smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things… but —
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

Music , Silence , Sun

“The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 42
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.

Education , Error , Nature , Light

“Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery.”

Robert Graves book The Greek Myths

Volume 1, Introduction
The Greek Myths (1955)

God , Children , Pleasure , Lovers

“Because of that whole kind of philosophy that we Latinos have where your roof caves in, your sink goes out on you, everything bad, but you got to go on with life…Ni modo. No matter what happens to you, you are a survivor. You endure. You keep on going.”

Denise Chávez (1948) American writer

On the perseverance of Latinos in “‘My Dream Was to Work at the Dairy Queen’: Author: Denise Chavez is earning raves for her first book, which celebrates Latino culture. But she isn’t moved by her new fame. She just wants to tell her tales--and re-stucco her house” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-09-ls-60448-story.html in the Los Angeles Times (1994 Nov 9)

Bad luck , Life

“Pray, O pray to God, dear friends, if you are not already asses — that he will cause you to become asses… There is none who praiseth not the golden age when men were asses: they knew not how to work the land. One knew not how to dominate another, one understood no more than another; caves and caverns were their refuge; they were not so well covered nor so jealous nor were they confections of lust and of greed. Everything was held in common.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cabal of the Cheval Pegasus (1585)

God , Age , Men

“The porkbusters fight is fun now, but not since early cave men tried to train grizzly bears to give them tongue-baths has a project seemed more obviously doomed to end in disappointment. Expecting Congress — of either party — to give back pork which has already been approved and passed into law is like expecting crack whores to give refunds days after services have been rendered.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2000s, 2005, Unhappy Warrior (2005)

Law , Whore , Disappointment , Fight

“For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Chance , Question , Heart , Way

“We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 9
The Present Crisis (1844)

Soul , Faith , Fate , Children

“Across the globe, in dark places of the earth, secret lairs were rarely caves of monsters or marvels but markets. Shops. The worst-kept secret in circulation was that certain activities invested items in their proximity with certain affects, effects, and powers, and made them hugely valuable. And that thus it was imperative that they be sold. That, certainly, had been the case for as long as there had been people and things, but there were always fluctuations. The occult economies of charged items were always jostling.”

China Miéville book The 9th Technique

The 9th Technique (p. 101)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Secret , People

“They are hideous Golgothas, these old intermural cemeteries of ours. In other cities cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and sculptor can give....There the horror is masked. Here it glares at us with empty sockets. The tombs are fissured, or have caved in, or have crumbled down into shapeless bricks and mortar...[and] crawfish undermine the walls to feast upon what is hidden within.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Lafcadio Hearn, Creole Sketches, ed. Charles Woodward Hutsun (1880; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1924), p. 136. Lafcadio Hearn referring to the cemeteries in New Orleans.

Beauty , Art

“It means "Ask the next question." Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created. This guy is sitting in a cave and he says, "Why can't man fly?"”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

Well, that's the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked.
The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We've found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it's technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that.

His explanation of the meaning of a small symbol he used when writing his signature, as quoted in an interview with David Duncan (with an image of his signature) http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/misc/duncan.html, sometime around 1980.

Question , Guy , Flying