The Sound of the Sea

"There is, one knows not what
sweet mystery about this sea,
whose gently awful stirrings seem to
speak of some hidden soul beneath..."

- Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)

Moby-Dick

"The immeasurable depth of
the sea beneath your feet;
the immeasurable depth of
heavens above your head.
A gust of wind hardly moved the sail.
The dark masses of water shifted
like a great slithering beast under
the boat, rocking it softly, gently."

- Witold Makowiecki (1902 - 1946)

Out of the Lion's Maw

"I felt once more how simple
and frugal a thing is happiness:
a glass of wine,
a roast chestnut,
a wretched little brazier,
the sound of the sea.
Nothing else."

- Nikos Kazantzakis (1883 - 1957)
Zorba the Greek

Reality of the Infinite

"... for as the reality of light cannot be proved or described in terms of visible shape, the reality of the infinite cannot be proved in terms of the finite. For this reason every attempt to prove the existence of God by logic is a foregone failure. Logic cannot reach God. It may travel backwards in time from effect to cause, effect to cause, but as long as it stays in time, as it must, it cannot touch the eternal. That which doesn't not begin with the infinite cannot end with it."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Islands in the Sea

"We are like islands in the sea,
separate on the surface
but connected in the deep."

- William James (1842 - 1910)

Bewilderments of the Eyes

"To them, I said, the truth
would be literally nothing but
the shadows of the images.
...

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he has a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den."

- Plato (c.424 - 348 BC)
Republic, "The Allegory of the Cave" 

Dimensionality of Time

"In this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures. Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds."

- Alan Lightman (1948 - )
Einstein's Dreams

Illimitable Universe

"As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. Nothing seems to me better adapted than this magnificent cosmological perspective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance, and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element... Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the 'riddles of the universe.'"

- Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919) 
The Riddle of the Universe

Limited Piece of the Whole

"A human being is a spatially and
temporally limited piece of the whole,
what we call the 'Universe.'
He experiences himself and his
feelings as separate from the rest,
an optical illusion of his consciousness.
The quest for liberation from this bondage
[or illusion] is the only object of true religion.
Not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming
it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace."

- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
Google's translation of Einstein’s original quotation