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Immensity Quotes

Browse 143 quotes about Immensity.

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Immensity Quotes

“Have you ever plunged into the immensity of space and time by reading the geological treatises of Cuvier? Borne away on the wings of his genius, have you hovered over the illimitable abyss of the past as if a magician's hand were holding you aloft? As one penetrates from seam to seam, from stratum to stratum and discovers, under the quarries of Montmartre or in the schists of the Urals, those animals whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, the mind is startled to catch a vista of the milliards of years and the millions of peoples which the feeble memory of man and an indestructible divine tradition have forgotten and whose ashes heaped on the surface of our globe, form the two feet of earth which furnish us with bread and flowers. Is not Cuvier the greatest poet of our century? Certainly Lord Byron has expressed in words some aspects of spiritual turmoil; but our immortal natural historian has reconstructed worlds from bleached bones.”

MindSciencePoetryTimeNaturalSpacePoetGeniusCivilizationDiscoveryMemoryHistorianFossilsTurmoilGeologyImmensityLord ByronFeebleMontmartreDiscovererCuvierGeorges CuvierTreatiseUralsBaron Georges CuvierGeorge ByronGeorge Gordon ByronGeorge Gordon NoelGeorge Gordon Noel Byron
Book:The Wild Ass's Skin
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“Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.”

LittlesLongHomeBeliefMillionsTaughtPlanetsEssentialsMajorsImportanceSpeciesAverageCornersAstronomyDefinedBiologyIngredientsCosmicRetreatGalaxyInitialsTaught UsGeologyGod ImageImmensity
Book:Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
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“So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!”

IfsMenMayDifferentEarthNamesNumbersClassWonderfulTruth IsBallsTinyVarietyCollectivesBelongingMagnificenceImmensity
Book:Thoughts
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“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”

IfsWorldLoveHeartMayRealPassionSexLove IsTalkingStrangeTruth IsBuiltCleanSizeAffectionIceConvenienceTabooReal ThingsImmensityStrange World
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.”

IfsLightHeavenHellFireGraceSkySightGreenFilledRoseProfoundBottomEdgesDancerFragileDelicatePaleFabricHungCurtainsTransparentFierySkillfulImmensityCrimsonNorthern Lights
Book:Northern lights
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“At a time when it's possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so.”

PeopleWorldHumansMayLongStillsNaturalHuman BeingsPlanetsOne DayLonelyRemainsSurfaceWitnessDramaticThirtyContinentsNatural WorldEverestDesolateImmensitySplendourAntarctica
Author:David Attenborough
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“There is nothing so charming as the knowledge of literature; of that branch of literature, I mean, which enables us to discover the infinity of things, the immensity of Nature, the heavens, the earth, and the seas; this is that branch which has taught us religion, moderation, magnanimity, and that has rescued the soul from obscurity; to make her see all things above and below, first and last, and between both; it is this that furnishes us wherewith to live well and happily, and guides us to pass our lives without displeasure and without offence.”

FirstsWellsMeanSoulEarthLastsLiteratureHeavenKnowledgeOur LivesSeaTaughtAll ThingsGuidesBranchesInfinityCharmingModerationObscurityTaught UsLive WellOffenceImmensityMagnanimityFirsts And LastsDispleasureAbove And Below
Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy.”

MindFirstsGodImagineSourceGoodnessDiscoveryPerfectionMercyGloriousConsiderationDependenceCheerfulnessImmensityAmiableGood Mind
Book:The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison
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“Love is universal. You don't have to tell somebody that loving is better than hating. You don't have to believe in God to know that stealing is bad. All of God's children and their different faiths help to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God.”

KnowsBelieveChildrenDifferentWholeHelpingChristianHateRealizingLove IsUniversalCornersStealingBelieve In GodHate YouImmensityWhole TruthDifferent Faiths
Author:Desmond Tutu
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“It is difficult to grasp the immensity and significance of the extreme reverence paid to the Goddess over a period of (at least) seven thousand years and over miles of land cutting across national boundaries and vast expanses of sea. Yet it is vital to do just that to fully comprehend the longevity as well as the widespread power and influence this religion once held.”

YearsWellsReligionDifficultWomenCuttingSeaInfluenceLandPeriodsThousandPaidSevenExtremesMilesBoundariesSignificanceReverenceGoddessLongevityThousand YearsImmensityExpanse
Author:Merlin Stone
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“We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.”

LittlesIdeasSeemsWould BeEarthDesireExistenceProgressProvePerfectionTrainFormerSufficientExpandingImmensityTrain Of Thought
Author:Humphry Davy
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“All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.”

MenSoulUseShowsHandsLightLyingMemoriesFeetMastersExerciseFunctionIntellectBackgroundsComparisonFacultyPossessedOrgansCalculationsImmensityHands And Feet
Book:Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays
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“If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?”

IfsMenShouldWritingMightAsksSpaceMadStriveDustBotherSatCosmosSymphonyFutilityMomentaryUnimaginableImmensityInsignificanceMicrobesNumbingTerminationAnomie
Author:Stanley Kubrick
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“It horribly skews the meaning of the cross when contemporary prophets of self-esteem say that the cross is a witness to my infinite worth. The biblical perspective is that the cross in a witness to the infinite worth of God's glory, and a witness to the immensity of the sin of my pride.”

SelfSinSelf EsteemPerspectivePrideGloryCrossesInfiniteHumbleContemporaryEsteemWitnessProphetBiblicalImmensity
Book:The Supremacy of God in Preaching
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“Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.”

ThinkingWorldFeelsKindSelfHelpingFallNaturalWalksExistenceStepsOceanDeceivingNatural WorldNumbAmnesiaImmensitySelf CenterednessCenterednessSummoning
Author:Jane Hirshfield
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“It was fantastic to be able to have my kids on set. Dash, my eldest son, who’s not quite five, was into knights and his godmother had given him a plastic Marks & Spencer knights’ outfit and [first assistant director] Tommy Gormley said that he could stand to protect me during the scene where Clive [Owen] is talking about the immensity of sitting on the throne. I’m actually looking through an archway at my son standing in his knights’ costume protecting me!”

FirstsSaidKidsAbleGivenTalkingFiveSonSceneDirectorsProtectSittingStandingMarkFantasticMy SonPlasticThronesCostumesKnightsAssistantsImmensityEldestGodmotherEldest SonArchways
Author:Cate Blanchett
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“Faced with the immensity of the universe, Job realized that there are limits to man's rationalizing, that we cannot find where the cloud of sorrow starts, that all our boasted knowledge is but an island in the vast ocean of mystery, and as the island of knowledge grows larger, the shore line of mystery becomes longer. At the end of his wits, he surrendered in trust to a Higher Wisdom.”

MenEndsJobsUniverseGrowsLinesMysteryHigherSorrowLimitsOceanCloudsWitIslandsShoreImmensityVast Ocean
Author:Ralph Washington Sockman
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“Jesus Christ, who had all the power in the world, saw us enslaved by the very things we thought would free us ... He laid aside the infinities and immensities of His being and, at the cost of His life, paid the debt for our sins, purchasing us the only place our hearts can rest, in His Father's house. Knowing He did this will transform us from the inside out.”

WorldHeartFatherHouseJesusChristSinKnowingSawsCostJesus ChristPaidDebtInfinityImmensityPurchasing
Book:The Prodigal God: Recovering the heart of the Christian faith
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