Words that inspire you

Elea

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Share some words that inspire awe, deep contemplation, or move the heart.

"All things are in flux." - Heraclitus
 

Altair

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"I dare do all that may become a man; who dare's do more is none. "

Macbeth.
 

Elea

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"Whence things have their origin,
Thence also occurs their destruction,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time." - Anaximander
 
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Elea

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The Presocratics believed matter was eternal. Two of the first explicit statements of the conservation of matter:

“The Greeks have an incorrect belief on Coming into Being and Passing Away. No thing comes into being or passes away, but is mixed together or separated from existing Things. Thus they would be correct if they called coming into being 'mixing', and passing away 'separating- off.'" - Anaxagoras

"For it is impossible for anything to come to be from what is not, and it cannot be brought about or heard of that what is should be utterly destroyed." - Empedocles
 
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Elea

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From the close of Crime and Punishment:

"It was love that brought them back to life: the heart of one held inexhaustible sources of life for the heart of the other." - Dostoevsky
 
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J

JustinCredible

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From the end of "A tale of two cities" when he's about to give up his life for someone else. . . . .
"It is a far better thing I do now than I have ever done before..It is a far better rest I go to than I have ever known"
 

Elea

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From the end of "A tale of two cities" when he's about to give up his life for someone else. . . . .
"It is a far better thing I do now than I have ever done before..It is a far better rest I go to than I have ever known"

Great Scott! lol You've inspired me to read Dickens, JustinCredible.
 

Elea

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Perhaps you'd approve these next lines, Altair (Atheist with a capital A!):

"There are but atoms and the void." - Democritus


Lucretius, a later Atomist, imagines what atoms are like:

“An image and similitude of this

Is always moving present to our eyes.

Consider sunbeams. When the sun’s rays let in

Pass through the darkness of a shuttered room,

You will see a multitude of tiny bodies

All mingling in a multitude of ways

Inside the sunbeam, moving in the void,

Seeming to be engaged in endless strife,

Battle and warfare, troop attacking troop,

And never a respite, harried constantly,

With meetings and with partings everywhere.

From this you can imagine what it is

For atoms to be tossed perpetually

In endless motion through the mighty void.

To some extent a small thing may afford

An image of great things, a footprint of a concept.” -

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
 
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Elea

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can also pass it to you... and let you do that something in my stead. Next!
 

megs233

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can also pass it to you... and let you do that something in my stead. Next!
There is nothing more nice
there nothing much worser

Than me as your vice
and you as my versa
 

Elea

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"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankinde, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne
 

TwoWhalesInAPool

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by Richard Feynman - last line in particular.

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.

Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.

Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering:

I a universe of atoms an atom in the universe.
 
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