Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

“I came late to the love of birds. For years I saw them only as a tremor at the edge of vision. They know suffering and joy in simple states not possible for us. Their lives quicken and warm to a pulse our hearts can never reach. They race to oblivion.”
—J.A. Baker

"Every night, we close our eyes, fall asleep and go mad. We meet people who are dead and encounter people who never existed and wind up in places where we have never been and never will be. That is the subjective truth, and that truth is real because it’s true for us"---Neil Gaiman

“But as much as we would rather enjoy the comfort of belief, to live in the adventure of the question is richer, better and, frankly, a great deal more fun.”
― Whitley Strieber, The Afterlife Revolution: We DO Live On and We CAN stay connected!

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

“I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.”
― Quentin Crisp, Resident Alien

"There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a ‘knowing’ from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘idea’ of that thing, our ‘objectivity.’-- Nietzsche (The Genealogy of Morals, III, 12).

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking."----John Maynard Keynes

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display."― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech”
― William Carlos Williams, Paterson