#toms

In another world,' he said, lowering his voice; I remember... was it not in another world, in a life which was not in thrall to sleep and its phantoms?... ↗

— Charles Nodier

#phantoms #sleep #dreams

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art. ↗

— John Updike

#art #change #convictions #customs #facts

Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them." "They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#customs #obedience #travel #truth-telling #home

God, when did Elli go from cute to hot? I mean, I've sensed it coming for a while, but all at once, here she is. Trouble on two legs. Two very nice legs. And now I need to go home and wash my brain out with soap. ↗

— Ingrid Paulson

#home

Yet I pity the poor wretch, though he's my enemy. He's yoked to an evil delusion, but the same fate could be mine. I see clearly: we who live are all phantoms, fleeing shadows. ↗

— Sophocles

#phantoms #pity #life

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#men

Most men live like raisins in a cake of custom. ↗

— Brand Blanshard

#men

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#habit #nature

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#cosmos #dna #sense-of-wonder #stars #wonder

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#cosmic #star-stuff #biology