Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Richard Dawkins

Quote by Richard Dawkins

Work

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

This book delves into the various forms of evidence that support the theory of evolution, including fossil records, genetic comparisons, and observations of natural selection in action. more

Author

Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a British ethologist, writer, and thinker, known for his contributions to evolutionary theory, particularly in the field of modern synthesis. He is widely recognized for his best-selling book 'The Selfish Gene', which explains the central role of genes in biological evolution. Dawkins has made significant impacts in the field of science communication and has sparked widespread discussions about human behavior and morality. more

You May Also Like

“Dead towns are the Cathedrals of Silence. They, too, have their gargoyles, singular figures, exaggerated, dubious, set in high profile. They stand out from the mass of grey, which takes all it has in the way of character, its twitchings of stagnant life from them. Some have been distorted by solitude, others grimace with a directionless fervour; here there are masks of cherished lust, there faces ceaselessly sculpted and furrowed by mysticism. Human gargoyles, the only figures of interest in this monotonous population.”

BrugesThe Bells Of BrugesCathedrals Of SilenceDead TownsHuman Gargoyles
Book:The Bells of Bruges
Create image

“Bruges had the air of a ghost town. The high towers, the trees along the canals withdrew, absorbed by the same muslin: impenetrable fog with not a single rift. Even the carillon seemed to have to escape, to force its way out of a prison yard filled with cotton wool to be free in the air, to reach the gables over which, every quarter of an hour, the bells poured, like falling leaves, a melancholy autumn of music.”

AutumnMelancholyBellsBrugesChucrh Bells
Book:Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories
Create image

“The carillon is, after all, the music of the people. Elsewhere, in the glittering capitals, public festivals are celebrated with fireworks, that magical offering that can thrill the very soul. Here, in the meditative land of Flanders, among the damp mists so antagonistic to the brilliance of fire, the carillon takes their place. It is a display of fireworks that one hears: flares, rockets, showers, a thousand sparks of sound which colour the air for visionary eyes alerted by hearing.”

BellsBrugesCarillon
Book:The Bells of Bruges
Create image

“Was that not the way it ought to be? The beauty of Bruges lay in being dead. From the top of the belfry it appeared completely dead to Borluut. He did not want to go back down ever again. His love for the town was greater, was endless. From now on it was a kind of frenzy, his final sensual pleasure. Constantly climbing high above the world, he started to enjoy death. There is danger in rising too high, into the unbreathable air of the summits. Disdain for the world, for life itself brings its own punishment.”

DeathBruges
Book:The Bells of Bruges
Create image

“Now Borluut was seeing it from close to. And to its very end, it seemed, from the way the line of the horizon merged into the infinite. It was bare. Not one ship. It ground out a dirge, in a glaucous tone, opaque, uniform. One sensed that all the colours were below, but faded. At the edge, the waves spilling onto the shore made a sound of washerwomen beating sheets of white linen, a whole supply of shrouds for future storms.”

BeachBruges
Book:The Bells of Bruges
Create image

“Once he had reached the top, he looked down on the town at his feet. Such repose, such tranquility, what a lesson in calmness! Seeing it, he was ashamed of his troubled existence. He renounced the love that brought him misery for the love of the town. It took hold of him again, suffusing his entire being as it had done during the first days of the Flemish Movement. How beautiful Bruges still was, seen from above, with its belfries, its pinnacles, its stepped gables like stairs to climb up to the land of dreams, to return to the great days of yesteryear. Among the roofs were canals fanned by the trees, quiet streets with a few women making their way in cloaks, swinging like silent bells. Lethargic peace! The sweetness of renunciation! A queen in exile, the widow of History whose only desire, basically, was to carve her own tomb.”

Bruges
Book:The Bells of Bruges
Create image