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Quote by Jay Nichols

“Standing there, peering around his room, Pete realized something that should have dawned on him years ago: Science really did suck. (Russell was right.) There just wasn’t any point to it. Sure, in its most altruistic distillation, science saved lives—but when had it ever made those lives worth living? The cold machine called science’s sole purpose, and Pete knew it now, was to drain the wonder out of things, to sap the imagination of its juices, to rob possibilities from dreamers. Science explained without ever getting to the crux of the matter, locking us all into a single paradigm of thought: that all we are is randomly accumulated stardust hanging out on a larger clump of randomly accumulated stardust that is spiraling out and away from other chunks of randomly accumulated stardust, on a collision course with an empty infinity.”

Quote by Jay Nichols

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Canis Major

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Jay Nichols

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“Jetez sur une étoile un rapide coup d'œil, regardez-la obliquement, en tournant vers elle la partie latérale de la rétine (beaucoup plus sensible à une lumière faible que la partie centrale), et vous verrez l'étoile plus distinctement; vous aurez l'appréciation la plus juste de son éclat, éclat qui s'obscurcit à proportion que vous dirigez votre vue en plein sur elle. Dans le dernier cas, il tombe sur l'œil un plus grand nombre de rayons; mais dans le premier, il y a une réceptibilité plus complète, une susceptibilité beaucoup plus vive. Une profondeur outrée affaiblit la pensée et la rend perplexe; et il est possible de faire disparaître Vénus elle-même du firmament par une attention trop soutenue, trop concentrée, trop directe.”

“Cold comradeship do stars provide. They light the closer, inner side Of night's vast weight, which, chill and clear, Pulls on us like some puppeteer. Its unseen threads to heads and hearts Attached, it acts us through our parts, From birth's first cry to bent old age, Upon our distant, tiny stage.”

“I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think.”

“I stare at the stars... And even though there are so many and they look so close together, I know they are light years apart. The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another, but they are so distant, so very far apart, that they cannot feel the warmth of each other, even though they are made of burning. This is the secret of the stars, I tell myself. In the end, we are alone. No matter how close you seem, no one else can touch you.”