Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.
Just stop and think a bit. All such things as bulk, or width, you know by comparison only; comparison with familiar things. So, just for fun, go up in an imaginary balloon, about half way to that old Moon, which has hung aloft from your birth_(and possibly a day or two in addition)_ and look down upon your __igantic_ city. How will it look? It is a small patch of various colors; but you know that, within that tiny patch, many thousands of your kind hurry back and forth; railway trains crawl out to far-away districts; and, if you can pick out a grain of dust that stands out dimly in a glow of sunlight, you may know that it is your mansion, your cabin or your hut, according to your financial status. Now, if that hardly shows up, how about you? What kind of a dot would you form in comparison? You must admit that your past thoughts as to your own pomposity will shrink just a bit! All this shows us that could this big World think, it wouldn't know that such a thing as Man was on it. And Man thinks that his part in all this unthinkably vast Cosmos is important! Why, you poor shrimp! if this old World wants to twitch just a bit and knock down a city or two, or split up a group of mountains, Man, with all his brain capacity, can only clash wildly about, dodging falling bricks.
Gadsby
Quote Detail
Just stop and think a bit. All such things as bulk, or width, you know by comparison only; comparison with familiar things. So, just for fun, go up in an imaginary balloon, about half way to that old Moon, which has hung aloft from your birth_(and possibly a day or two in addition)_ and look down upon your __igantic_ city. How will it look? It is a small patch of various colors; but you know that, within that tiny patch, many thousands of your kind hurry back and forth; railway trains crawl out to far-away districts; and, if you can pick out a grain of dust that stands out dimly in a glow of sunlight, you may know that it is your mansion, your cabin or your hut, according to your financial status. Now, if that hardly shows up, how about you? What kind of a dot would you form in comparison? You must admit that your past thoughts as to your own pomposity will shrink just a bit! All this shows us that could this big World think, it wouldn't know that such a thing as Man was on it. And Man thinks that his part in all this unthinkably vast Cosmos is important! Why, you poor shrimp! if this old World wants to twitch just a bit and knock down a city or two, or split up a group of mountains, Man, with all his brain capacity, can only clash wildly about, dodging falling bricks.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things.Until it was no more. Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone. The birth of a city... It had become the death of a world.
To build a church when a school house is needed is to perpetrate a theft upon education.To build a church when a hospital is needed is to take from the parched lips of the sick the cup of relief and from the suffering the merciful hand of help.When the object of man's conduct will be to improve the conditions of his fellow man and not the appeasement of a mythical God, he will become more understanding and more indulgent of the frailties, mistakes, and action of others, and by the same token he will become more appreciative of their efforts.He will develop a greater consciousness to avoid mistakes and to prevent injury. Life and its living will take on a greater significance, and our efforts and energies will be devoted to creating as much joy and happiness as possible for all living creatures.
Because if God doesn't exist we are the creaturesof highest consciousness in the universe. We alone understand thepassage of time and the value off every minute of human life. Andwhat constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would have died tomorrow or the day after oreventually . . . it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, this life . . . every second of it . . . is all we have.
UFO.... MIB???UFO = MIB??!?What now... please keep the silence!
It is only the man that delays his gratification that is a man indeed.