3
" Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! ... Milton tried to see the first woman; but Cary, he saw her not ... I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus" --" Pagan that you are! what does that signify?" " I say, there were giants on the earth in those days: giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence: the stregth which could bear a thousand years of bondage, -- the vitality which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, -- the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation. ...I saw -- I now see -- a woman-Titan: her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as an avalanche sweeps from hear head to her feet, and arabesques of lighting flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear -- they are deep as lakes -- they are lifted and full of worship -- they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers: she reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehova's daughter, as Adam was His son. "
4
" Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.”
Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life—”
“I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over…”
It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said…
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned—”
“No!” she said. “Gods, Percy, that’s so sweet. "
― Rick Riordan , The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3)
11
" A procession of the damned: By the damned I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed will march. You'll read them, or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten. Some of them are corpses, skeletons, mummies, twitching, tottering, animated by companions that have been damned alive. There are giants that will walk by, though sound asleep. There are things that are theorems and things that are rags. They'll go by, like you could, arm-in-arm with the spirit of anarchy. Here and there will foot little harlots. Many are clowns, but many are of the highest respectability. Some are assassins. There are pale stenches and gaunt superstitions and mere shadows and lively malices, whims and amiabilities, the naive and the pedantic and the bizarre and the grotesque and the sincere and the insincere, the profound, and the puerile. A stab and a laugh and the patiently folded hands of hopeless propriety. The ultra-respectable! But the condemned, anyway. "
― Charles Fort , The Book of the Damned
14
" That black, maddening firmament; that vast cosmic ocean, endlessly deep in every direction, both Heaven and Pandemonium at once; mystical Zodiac, speckled flesh of Tiamat; all that is chaos, infinite and eternal. And yet, it's somehow the bringing to order of this chaos which perhaps has always disturbed me most. The constellations, in their way, almost bring into sharper focus the immensity and insanity of it all - monsters and giants brought to life in all their gigantic monstrosity; Orion and Hercules striding across the sky, limbs reaching for lightyears, only to be dwarfed by the likes of Draco, Pegasus, or Ursa Major. Then bigger still - Cetus, Eridanus, Ophiuchus, and Hydra, spanning nearly the whole of a hemisphere, sunk below the equator in that weird underworld of obscure southern formations. You try to take them in - the neck cranes, the eyes roll, and the mind boggles until this debilitating sense of inverted vertigo overcomes you... "
― , Citations: A Brief Anthology
16
" To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, mêlées of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life! "
― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables
19
" Dave and Serge...played the Fiddler's Elbow as if it were Giants Stadium, and even though it was acoustic, they just about blew the place up. They were standing on chairs adn lying on the floor, they were funny, they charmed everyone in the pub apart from an old drunk ditting next to the drum kit...who put his fingers firmly in his ears during Serge's extended harmonica solo. It was utterly bizarre and very moving: most musicians wouldn't have bothered turning up, let alone almost killing themselves. And I was reminded...how rarely one feels included in a live show. Usually you watch, and listen, and drift off, and the band plays well or doesn't and it doesn't matter much either way. It can actually be a very lonely experience. But I felt a part of the music, and a part of the people I'd gone with, and, to cut this short before the encores, I didn't want to read for about a fortnight afterward. I wanted to write, but I didn't want to read no book. I was too itchy, too energized, and if young people feel like that every night of the week, then, yes, literature 's dead as a dodo.
(Nick's thoughts after seeing Marah at a little pub called Fiddler's Elbow.) "
― Nick Hornby , The Polysyllabic Spree
20
" Tempestuous plains tell the tale,Windswept wastes do bewail,Haunting Spirit of the land,Seeks the living, seeks the damned.Horizoned edge sheared with grass, Dark Storm Rising in the pass,Ageless Spirit seeks the path,To torment souls to the last.Brooding Spirit upon the plain,Thunderhead gathers for the rain. Light grows dim then bolts with pain,On dry Earth her sin is stained.(Frightened creatures do stampede,Into night, they do recede).Ungodded hand on seasoned blade,Reaps the harvest of the Age.Released from her eternal din,Spirit of the Age rises again.Seeking to plunder and consume, Those who were proud, those who presumed.Spirits rage while storm draws nigh,Upon burning plain and emblazoned sky.It is said giants grapple in the Earth so deep,To contend for souls that they might keep. The Storm spirit now searches the high and the low,To seek her manchild victim in the fields below.Leaves bad wasteland to claim but a fallen man,Denying it Heaven, crowning it, ‘Son of the Damned.’Treacherous Spirit of the far lost night, Tramples souls down denying them light.Storm seethes with furious hiss,Leads men on to bottomless pit.This most ancient of foes has come from her den,To seek the living, to make ready those dead. A living sacrifice is her soul desire,To snatch the soul for black funeral pyre.A double-damned devil, that is she,This one who lies, who claims to make free.A lying spirit, that is her domain, A storm-wracked Fury of self-proclaim.Onward she seeks, this bleak Northern wind,Searching for naught but for a soul akin.Amidst the howling and the rage,To murder again, that is her trade. As this spirit of graves left the plain,She left a wake of dead in shrouded train. Now down from the plain Storm did come,Unto those cities wherein was no sun.There with whirlwind she did rip and scour, For those souls of whom she could tear and devour.She comes to seek the living and the dead,Those who were frightened, those with no dread.Thus upon those she did acclaim,“I am the Mistress of the living and the slain.” O’ haunting Spirit of this land,Taker of life, maker of the damned. --On Villainess Storm, Ch. One Valley of the Damned "
