#abyss

Donald had reached its further edge, and could hear the rush of the stream from the deep obscurity of the abyss below, when there rose from the opposite side a strain of the most delightful music he had ever heard. ↗

— Hugh Miller

#below #could #deep #delightful #donald

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#abyss #between #brief #common #common sense

I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss. ↗

— Edward Grey

#apparent #became #call #edge #else

Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#beauty #decadence #falling #humiliation #beauty

A growing heat, like a million blazing suns all focused on me, lit my insides. It felt like I was being cooked in the Gabriella Roast Cooker, me spinning around-and-around to heat my flesh evenly. For some reason I was having trouble comprehending the sudden change in my revolving world as I swelled with a horrible, billowing fire. ↗

— Laura Kreitzer

#blazing #fire #heat #kreitzer #suns

[death]...the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return ↗

— George Washington

#death #permitted #return #traveler #death

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#experience #terrors #experience

When the ship approached the equator, I stopped going out on deck in the daytime. The sun burned like a flame. The days had shortened and night came swiftly. One moment it was light, the next it was dark. The sun did not set but fell into the water like a meteor. Late in the evening, when I went out briefly, a hot wind slapped my face. From the ocean came a roar of passions that seemed to have broken through all barriers:'We mus procreate and multiply! We must exhaust all the powers of lust!' The waves glowed like lava, and I imagined I could see multitudes of living beings - algae, whales, sea monsters - reveling in an orgy, from the surface to the bottom of the sea. Immortality was the law here. The whole planet raged with animation. At times, I heard my name in the clamor: the spirit of the abyss calling me to join them in their nocturnal dance. ("Hanka") ↗

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

#equator #ocean #orgy #sea #sea-monsters

While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the 'new', which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place where the antidote can be found. ↗

— Roberto Bolaño

#bolano #books #literature-and-illness #sex #travel

If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you. ↗

— Cory Doctorow

#cynical #negative #nietzsche #people #cynicism