41
" When a person dies, they cross over from the realm of freedom to the realm of slavery. Life is freedom, and dying is a gradual denial of freedom. Consciousness first weakens and then disappears. The life-processes – respiration, the metabolism, the circulation – continue for some time, but an irrevocable move has been made towards slavery; consciousness, the flame of freedom, has died out.
The stars have disappeared from the night sky; the Milky Way has vanished; the sun has gone out; Venus, Mars and Jupiter have been extinguished; millions of leaves have died; the wind and the oceans have faded away; flowers have lost their colour and fragrance; bread has vanished; water has vanished; even the air itself, the sometimes cool, sometimes sultry air, has vanished. The universe inside a person has ceased to exist. This universe is astonishingly similar to the universe that exists outside people. It is astonishingly similar to the universes still reflected within the skulls of millions of living people. But still more astonishing is the fact that this universe had something in it that distinguished the sound of its ocean, the smell of its flowers, the rustle of its leaves, the hues of its granite and the sadness of its autumn fields both from those of every other universe that exists and ever has existed within people, and from those of the universe that exists eternally outside people. What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves. "
― Vasily Grossman , Life and Fate
43
" Inside, there was a bed, and upon the bed there was a woman. More beautiful was she even than the damask rose while her scent, drifting through the open window, was that of the night dew. Her hair was silken as the raven's wing. Quite naked, she lay, so still upon the bed, her eyes closed in reverie.
The young man looked first upon her breasts, where her hand rested. And upon each breast, there was a rosebud nipple. Upon each nipple there was a tip most tender. Upon each tip there was a milky drop.
Chin lifted, lips parted, she milked her maiden breast.
'What I would give to suckle at that teat,' thought he.
from 'Against Faithlessness' in Cautionary Tales "
― Emmanuelle de Maupassant , Cautionary Tales
47
" Memories are fragile, you try to grab them and they skitter away in various directions. Trying to gather them together to write them out is difficult, they resist, get clouded and escape as wisps of smoke. Nothing seems as crystal clear as it once was, a milky film of opacity envelopes everything. Odd details stand out in one’s mind, not a continuum. A fragrance, an odour, the smell of toast burning perhaps or whiff of jasmine, a shade of pink, a flower pressed between the pages of a book, brings on a sharp burst of memories that drown you with their immediacy. "
― Kiran Manral , The Face At the Window
48
" In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half, hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below.
The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello.
It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles.
There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows. "
― Philip Pullman , The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3)
50
" Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? "
― Herman Melville , Moby-Dick or, the Whale
56
" An oceanic expanse of pre-dawn gray white below obscures a checkered grid of Saskatchewan, a snow plain nicked by the dark, unruly lines of woody swales. One might imagine that little is to be seen from a plane at night, but above the clouds the Milky Way is a dense, blazing arch. A full moon often lights the planet freshly, and patterns of human culture, artificially lit, are striking in ways not visible in daylight. One evening I saw the distinctive glows of cities around Delhi diffused like spiral galaxies in a continuous deck of stratus clouds far below us. In Algeria and on the Asian steppes, wind-whipped pennants of gas flared. The jungle burned in incandescent spots in Malaysia and Brazil. One clear evening at 20,000 feet over Manhattan, I could see, it seemed, every streetlight halfway to the end of Long Island. A summer lightning bolt unexpectedly revealed thousands of bright dots on the ink-black veld of the northern Transvaal: sheep. "
― Barry Lopez , About This Life
57
" I stood behind the man’s chair, my blade at his throat.
“Why do you do it?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. “Kill people, and blow up buildings, and sell drugs?”
It was what they all did. Committed crimes. That was why I killed them.
“You’re a criminal, a terrorist, a danger. And I have been asked to take you out.” I told him.
I was legend now, yet he asked the same question all the others did.
“What is your name?”
My sensitive ears tuned out the slit as my sword cut his neck.
I walked around the chair to see his face. I watched as his eyes–slowly at first–changed from blue to milky white. His skin went pale.
And as I heard him take his last breath, I ducked in so my lips hovered at his ear, and whispered, “My name, is Sharden. "
― Alysha Speer , Sharden (Body of Blades #1)
60
" People are like stars in the Milky Way. There are millions of them. There are big, small, dead, and dying stars out there. Hindi ikaw ang nag-iisang bituin d'yan sa langit, kaya hindi sa'yo umiikot ang mundo. Puweding makinang ka ngayon, pero asahan mong parating may darating na mas makinang pa sa'yo. Malaki ang posibilidad na mawala sa'yo ang atensiyon ng iba, pero tandaan mo ang isang bagay." Whatever happens, you're still a star. There will still be people looking at you, admiring your beauty, and wishing for great things to happen to them with your help. You can't let them down, so you have to continue shining for them. You have to show them directions. That's what stars are for. "
