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1 " Ian looked skyward to see the firedrake soaring overhead. Its mass was a black deluge, an eclipse of aberrant origins, and its wings were tautly wound, like a spider’s web. Scales that shown like bejeweled armor glistened upon its body. Its tail crashed against the air; the storm surge of an impetuous sea. The shadow it cast was an aperture of dementia that ripped asunder the sanity of those who watched. Astride the beast’s spine, rode a figure that resembled a man, but with such grandeur at his disposal, appeared a living god. "
― Fernando A. Torres , The Shadow That Endures
2 " And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen. "
― Mark Haddon , The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
3 " Darkness is more than a shade of nightfall. It is a feeling as though there has been an eclipse not only within what should be a vibrant life inside you but in all that is good around you. "
― Andrew Kendall , The Dark Dictionary: A Guide to Help Eradicate Your Darkness, Restore Your Light, and Redefine Your Life.
4 " The notion that writings created at a time when men huddled in superstitious terror from an eclipse can possibly be a credible representation of the Creator (whatever that word means to each person) is so absurd as to border on delusional. "
― Dave Champion
5 " The Divine decree is the necessary condition of the Divine foreknowledge. If God does not first decide what shall come to pass, he cannot know what will come to pass. An event must be made certain, before it can be known as a certain event. In order that a man may foreknow an act of his own will, he must first have decided to perform it.So long as he is undecided about a particular volition, he cannot foreknow this volition. Unless God had determined to create a world, he could not know that there would be one. For the world cannot create itself, and there is but one being who can create it. If therefore this being has not decided to create a world, there is no certainty that a world will come into existence ; and if there is no certainty of a world, there can be no certain foreknowledge of a world. So long as anything remains undecreed, it is contingent and fortuitous. It may or may not happen. In this state of things, there cannot be knowledge of any kind. If a man had the power to cause an eclipse of the sun, and had decided to do this, he could then foreknow that the event would occur. But if he lacks the power, or if having the power, he has not formed the purpose, he can have no knowledge of any kind respecting the imagined event. He has neither knowledge nor foreknowledge, because there is nothing to be known. Blank ignorance is the mental condition. "
6 " Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer? "
― Henri Poincaré , Science and Method
