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Primeval Quotes

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Primeval Quotes

“[The Edfu Building Texts in Egypt] take us back to a very remote period called the 'Early Primeval Age of the Gods'--and these gods, it transpires, were not originally Egyptian, but lived on a sacred island, the 'Homeland of the Primeval Ones,' and in the midst of a great ocean. Then, at some unspecified time in the past, an immense cataclysm shook the earth and a flood poured over this island, where 'the earliest mansions of the gods' had been founded, destroying it utterly, submerging all its holy places, and killing most of its divine inhabitants. Some survived, however, and we are told that this remnant set sail in their ships (for the texts leave us in no doubt that these 'gods' of the early primeval age were navigators) to 'wander' the world. Their purpose in doing so was nothing less than to re-create and revive the essence of their lost homeland, to bring about, in short: 'The resurrection of the former world of the gods ... The re-creation of a destroyed world.' [...] The takeaway is that the texts invite us to consider the possibility that the survivors of a lost civilization, thought of as 'gods' but manifestly human, set about 'wandering' the world in the aftermath of an extinction-level global cataclysm. By happenstance it was primarily hunter-gatherer populations, the peoples of the mountains, jungles, and deserts--'the unlettered and the uncultured,' as Plato so eloquently put it in his account of the end of Atlantis--who had been 'spared the scourge of the deluge.' Settling among them, the wanderers entertained the desperate hope that their high civilization could be restarted, or that at least something of its knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual ideas could be passed on so that mankind in the post-cataclysmic world would not be compelled to 'begin again like children, in complete ignorance of what happened in early times.”

FoundDestructionGodsPrimevalDeep Human HistoryCataclysmRemnant
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
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“Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.' ("The Wendigo")”

NatureWildernessPrimitiveHostileMonstrousSuperstitionMonsterPrimevalPrimeval Man
Book:Monster Mix
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“I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals. Again, I see no reason why the belief that we are insignificant or fortuitous should lessen our faith.”

IfsShouldBelieveStillsMatterReasonScienceUniverseIndividualBeliefInterestRaceCreatorCornersTinyReason WhyNo ReasonInsignificantPrimevalFortuitous
Author:Rosalind Franklin
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“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed,-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees-tens of centuries old-that have been destroyed.”

IfsMenLifeLongHas BeensStillsRunningScienceFunTreeCenturyFoolDollarsPlantNobleForestsDestroyedRunning AwayMagnificentHornsBarkBackboneMagnificenceHuntedPrimevalOld TreesPlants And TreesTwo TreesSaplingsAncient Trees
Book:Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
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“A central feature of the ceremonial associated with Mithras was the taurobolium, the ritual slaughter of a bull which commemorated and repeated Mithras' primeval act. The initiate was baptized in its blood, partaking of its life-giving properties. It may be noted that this part of the ceremonial closely resembled the ritual of the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother of Asia Minor, which had been brought to Rome three centuries before Christ.”

GivingMayMotherThreeChristBloodCenturyPropertyFeaturesRitualRomeMinorsCultAsiaBullsSlaughterInitiateBaptizedGreat MotherPrimevalBaptized In
Author:Ninian Smart
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“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down.”

WayLongAnimalAliveGenerationsDogYouthTrainingInstinctForestsRememberedRanMeatPacksVagueDog TrainingPrimevalWild Dogs
Book:Call of The Wild, White Fang
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“Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of all time and space call it brain or heart of creation activates every function, who is the artist who would not dwell there?”

HeartArtistSpaceSecretBrainCreationEvolutionFunctionChosenAll TimeRegionsNurtureTime And SpacePenetrateActivatePrimevalSecret Places
Book:Paul Klee: dialogue with nature
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“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”

HumansLooksHeartLongSoulDreamLightPurposeNightExistenceVisionDarknessClearDoorsEgoConsciousMereIntimateCosmicSoleHuman ExistenceKindlesMemories Dreams ReflectionsPrimeval
Author:Carl Jung
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“Any fool can destroy trees, they cannot run away.”

RunningTreeFoolForestsRunning AwayBarkForests And TreesRedwoodsPrimevalPlants And TreesSaplingsDestroying The Earth
Book:JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
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“When primeval man first used flint stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one to break the flints on purpose and not a very wide step to fashion them rudely.”

MenWould BeUsedPurposeStepsBreakFashionStonesWideFragmentsPrimeval
Book:The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex ... Second Edition, Revised and Augmented, with Illustrations. Tenth Thousand
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“Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I shall endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

PeoplePainLostJusticeCitiesDivineEternalTasksMovedEndureAbandonFoundersFabricWoeInfernoPrimevalDivine Comedy
Book:The vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, tr. by H.F. Cary. With notes
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“The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn.”

WorldMindWholePastWaitingSidesDarknessSunSawsCarTrainLeavingWanderSmokeDawnSteelTwistedRailroadsRustPrimeval
Book:Collected Poems 1947-1997
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“I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”

WritingHumansLongBookWould BeAgePastFoundTypeToolsInstancePocketsCarrieKnivesEpicInfantPrimeval
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.”

WorldBelieveHumansMadeBodyCoursesI BelieveHuman BeingsQualityCenturyInformationGoes OnConversationDiversityForestsAppropriateCivilizedInquiryIntercourseUtterancePrimevalThis I Believe
Author:Michael Joseph Oakeshott
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“What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.”

WorldWantEarthIndividualUnderstandingCommunityNaturalPrideEnlightenmentConsequenceUniversalContactStrifeEgoismPlungeBarbarismEliminationPrimevalNatural Consequences
Book:My Inventions: And Other Writings
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“And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.”

Has BeensMadeDoneFeelingsFeltToo MuchStrongerShameGuiltComplicatedChiefsDamageCharacteristicsRemorseAmendsPrimeval
Book:The Sense of an Ending
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“This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past.”

MenWorldNeedsPastLyingAcceptingPlanetsCivilizationIdealsBasesSeekingSuperiorsQuestsOther WorldsPrototypeNeeds Of OthersPrimeval
Author:Stanislaw Lem
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“Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”

MenFeelsMindGodBodyScienceNatureSceneSolitudeBreathsFilledMereProductionsForestsTemplesImpressedExceedTropicalPrimevalSublimity
Book:What Mr. Darwin Saw in His Voyage Round the World in the Ship
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“Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.”

MindDifferentNatureBeautyCreativeDesignThousandReflectionVariousAppearanceVisiblePhenomenonSelf ReflectionUtteranceCreative MindPrimeval
Book:Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann
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“After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.”

LongTodayPastFoundEffortTakenPositionEvolutionMiracleMythMythologyAssumptionTheologianRelianceOrigin Of LifePrimeval
Book:The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
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“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it (1040,000).... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”

IfsLifeHas BeensMatterEnoughWholeBigsNumbersPlanetsProductsTheoryEvolutionIntelligenceSoupFormationLikelihoodTheory Of EvolutionOrigin Of LifePrimevalBeginning Of LifeEvolution Of Life
Author:Fred Hoyle
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