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1 " He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon. "
― Steven Millhauser , Little Kingdoms
2 " Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarreling with one another. These theories, again, are based upon belief. One man says there is a Supreme Being sitting above the clouds governing the whole universe, and he asks me to believe that solely on the authority of his assertion. But if you actually attempt to realize what Christ realized, the entire structure of the Church would collapse. "
― Abhijit Naskar , Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
3 " After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which the entire structure rested, namely the geocentric system of the universe. The fact that the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, related to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind. Celestial mechanics and spectrum analysis finally robbed them of their mysterious prestige. "
― Franz Cumont , Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans
4 " I closed my eyes and let a wave of heat pass over me, tingling right down into my fingertips. As my eyes flickered open I let my hands shoot out in front of me, sending a spiral of flames into a nearby tree. The entire structure caught alight and glowed grotesquely." Remind me never to make you angry!" A now all-too familiar voice said behind me. "
