About 3.6 million years ago, a series of light ash eruptions from a nearby volcano coincided with a series of rain showers, probably at the onset of the rainy season. The ash filled depressions in the landscape, and the rain transformed them into mud pans. Animals crossed the pans while they were still wet, and their tracks were preserved as the ash dried hard as cement.
, Africa: A Biography of the Continent
1997
“...and stay at my perfect weight and this age for the rest of my life and I would just go around the world continually following that line shouting advice and being mistaken for God.”
, QI
2010
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap…
And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.
, Small Gods
1992
At the same time, immediately after May 1945, Germans, and especially the citizens of Berlin, were determined to restore some sense of normality in their lives. This effort found expression in a sometimes paradoxical reinstatement of routines and rituals of everyday civilian life that seemed incongruous alongside the rubble piles that constituted most of the city—such as opening fashion salons, organizing fashion shows, and launching a variety of magazines featuring fashion as their main theme.
, Film and Fashion Amidst the Ruins of Berlin
2008
Behind and around the great empires—Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria and Persia—flowered this medley of half nomad, half settled tribes: Cimmerians, Cilicians, Cappadocians, Bithnyians, Ashkanians, Mysians, Maeonians, Carians, Lycians, Pamphylians, Pisidians, Lycaonians, Philistines, Amorites, Canaanites, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, and a hundred other peoples each of which felt itself the center of geography and history, and would have marveled at the ignorant prejudice of an historian who would reduce them to a paragraph.
, The Story of Civilization, Volume I: Our Oriental Heritage
1935
Besides, the idea of royal plumes in his hat revolted him. He'd always had a thing about plumes. Plumes sort of, well, bought you off, told everyone that you didn't belong to yourself. And he'd feel like a bird. It'd be the last straw.
, Guards! Guards! Both the red fox and the coyote are free of the night hours, and both killers for pure love of slaughter. The fox is no great talker, but the coyote goes garrulously through the dark in twenty keys at once, gossiping, warning, and abuse.
, The Land of Little Rain
1903
"Can you swing a sack of doorknobs?"
, The Simpsons
1994
Christianity did not oust an older belief, but fused with it. Years later, in 1704, when the cathedral at Mbanza-Kongo had already fallen to ruin, a local black mystic would live amid the ruins and claim that Christ and the Madonna were members of the Kongo tribe. When missionaries traversed the lower reaches of the Congo in the mid-nineteenth century, they still met people with names like Ndodioko (from Don Diogo), Ndoluvualu (from Don Alvaro) and Ndonzwau (from Don João). They also saw rituals being performed before crucifixes three centuries old, but now decked out with shells and stones and roundly claimed by all to be indigenous.
, Congo: The Epic History of a People
2010
“Did you never kill with your own hands?”
“It’s possible I did,” Girumuhatse said, “Because if I didn’t they’d have killed my wife.”
“Possible?” I said. “Or true?”
Bosco, the translator, said, “You know what he means,” and didn’t translate the question.
, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
1998
Egwene clung to Rand’s arm for two more bridges. He regretted it when she finally let go with a murmured apology and a forced laugh, and not just because it had felt good having her hold onto him that way. It was easier to be brave, he discovered, when someone needed your protection.
, The Eye of the World
1990
He became a seeker of crowds, but the crowds thinned and abandoned him. He became a seeker of lights, but the lights grew strange and led him into desolate places.
, Songs of a Dead Dreamer
1985
He died, as do most medicine-men of the Paiutes.
, The Land of Little Rain
1903
He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.
, The Once and Future King
1938
He then replied, "Sarah, I am heartily sorry for you, but we cannot help it. We are ordered to take your people to Yakima Reservation." It was just a little before Christmas. My people were only given one week to get ready in.
I said, "What! In this cold winter and in all this snow, and my people have so many little children? Why, they will all die. Oh, what can the President be thinking about? Oh, tell me, what is he? Is he man or beast? Yes, he must be a beast; if he has no feeling for my people, surely he ought to have some for the soldiers."
"I have never seen a president in my life and I want to know whether he is made of wood or rock, for I cannot for once think that he can be a human being. No human being would do such a thing as that — send people across a fearful mountain in midwinter."
I was told not to say anything till three days before starting. Every night I imagined I could see the thing called President. He had long ears, he had big eyes and long legs, and a head like a bull-frog or something like that. I could not think of anything that could be so inhuman as to do such a thing — send people across mountains with snow so deep.
, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims
1883
I have listened to your words but can find no reason why I should obey you — I would rather die first. If it be friendship that you desire, then I am ready for it, today and always; but to be your subject, that I cannot be . . . I do not fall at your feet, for you are God’s creature just as I am. I am Sultan here in my land. You are Sultan there in yours . . . As for me, I will not come to you, and if you are strong enough, then come and fetch me.
, Letter written to German commander Hermann von Wissmann, refusing German rule
1890
I like the name the Indians give to the mountain of Lone Pine . . . Oppapago, The Weeper. It sits eastward and solitary from the lordliest ranks of the Sierras, and above a range of little, old, blunt hills, and has a bowed, grave aspect as of some woman you might have known, looking out across the grassy barrows of her dead.
, The Land of Little Rain
1903
If Crusoe on his island had the library of Alexandria, and a certainty that he should never again see the face of man, would he ever open a volume?
, On Revolution
1963
In the dark of the morning he rode out of the city on his horse Kanthaka, with his charioteer Chauna clinging desperately to the tail. Then Mara, Prince of Evil, appeared to him and tempted him, offering him great empires. But Buddha refused, and riding on, crossed a broad river with one mighty leap. A desire to look again at his native city arose in him, but he did not turn. Then the great earth turned round, so that he might not have to look back.
, Our Oriental Heritage
1935
In West Central Africa, the BaKongo had a practice of abandoning a village when its chief died and building a new one at a different site. The old chief’s household fence became the stockade about its gate. Each village of the living then had its counterpart of the previous generation, the village of the dead in the forest.
,
After Palmares: Diaspora, Inheritance, and the Afterlives of Zumbi
2024
“Is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr Beaver sternly. Certainly not. I tell you he is King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
1950
It is the young watercress that tempts them and the pleasures of society, for they seldom drink. Even in localities where there are flowing streams they seem to prefer the moisture that collects on herbage, and after rains may be seen rising on their haunches to drink delicately the clear drops caught in the tops of the young sage. But drink they must, as I have often seen them mornings and evenings at the rill that goes by my door. Wait long enough at the Lone Tree Spring and sooner or later they will all come in.
, The Land of Little Rain
1903
It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits…
, Watership Down
1972
No two of Aksum’s six great stelae are identical, either in size or in the complexity of their decoration, but when arranged in order of increasing size the sequence corresponds exactly with the stylistic development of the decoration. Each stele is larger and more elaborately decorated than the one before. This “mania for the gigantic” appears to have ended with the greatest of the six stelae, possibly because its fall was interpreted as a bad omen, possibly because its manufacture demonstrated the sheer impossibility of hewing, transporting, and raising anything larger. The end of the series also appears to coincide with the period during which Aksum turned from the deification of kings to the worship of Christ, a coincidence which may have been purely fortuitous, but could have been significant.
, Africa: A Biography of the Continent
1997
No tyrant in history was able to read, but every single one of them burned the books.
, Soul!
1971
“People are like, ‘Well, Kane doesn’t have any scars from the fire.’ That was the thing—he never had any scars! But he wore a mask this whole time because he was convinced that he did.”
, The Broken Skull Sessions
2021
People were stupid sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
, Guards! Guards! Pizza, soda, the moon. Someone to share it with.
, The Office
2011
“So Merlyn sent you to me," said the badger, "to finish your education. Well, I can only teach you two things—to dig, and love your home. These are the true end of philosophy.”
, The Once and Future King
1938
Sometimes I laugh when I think of this battle. It was very exciting in one way, and the soldiers made a splendid chase, and deserved credit for it; but where was the killing? I sometimes think it was more play than anything else. If a white settler showed himself he was sure to get a hit from an Indian; but I don't believe they ever tried to hit a soldier — they liked them too well — and it certainly was remarkable that with all these splendid firearms, and the Gatling gun, and General Howard working at it, and the air full of bullets, and the ground strewn with cartridges, not an Indian fell that day.
, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims
1883
Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.
, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
1831
“The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places.
, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
1831
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something." That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
, The Once and Future King
1938
The boy in war is, to an extent found in almost no other form of work, inextricably bound up with the qualities and conditions―berry laden or snow laden―of the ground over which he walks or runs or crawls and with which he craves and courts identification, as in the camouflage clothing he wears and the camouflage postures he adopts, now running bent over parallel with the ground it is his work to mime, now arching forward conforming the curve of his back to the curve of a companion boulder, now standing as upright and still and narrow as the slender tree behind which he hides; he is the elms and the mud, he is one the hundred and sixth, he is a small piece of German terrain broken off and floating dangerously through the woods of France. He is a fragment of American earth wedged into an open hillside in Korea and reworked by its unbearable sun and rain. He is dark blue like the sea. He is light grey like the air through which he flies. He is sodden in the green shadows of earth. He is a light brown vessel of Australian blood that will soon be opened and emptied across the rocks and bridges of Gallipoli from which he can never again become distinguishable.
, The Body in Pain
1985
The dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day—these were among the first creators of civilization.
, The Story of Civilization, Volume I: Our Oriental Heritage
1935
The house was empty for years… The trees moved in and so did we.
, Stardew Valley
2016
The PIDE agents usually worked in teams of four and in four-hour shifts against
a victim, until the victim's will and morale were broken. One PIDE agent explained
the evolution of torture in Portugal to Mrs Bastos while she was in prison: that years
ago only a lower elementary school education and the ability to beat people were
required in order to become a PIDE agent, but that in recent years the PIDE had come
to believe in psychological methods more than in physical ones, and that consequently
the PIDE recruited among graduates of secondary schools. The agent believed that in
the future higher and higher education would be necessary to be able to apply the
most complicated kinds of psychological torture.
, Workshop on Human Rights: Report & Recommendations
1975
The whole interpretation of history as progress falters when we consider that these statues, bas-reliefs and paintings, numerous though they are, may be but an infinitesimal fraction of the art that expressed or adorned the life of primeval man. What remains is found in caves, where the elements were in some measure kept at bay; it does not follow that prehistoric men were artists only when they were in caves. They may have carved as sedulously and ubiquitously as the Japanese, and may have fashioned statuary as abundantly as the Greeks; they may have painted not only the rocks in their caverns, but textiles, wood, everything—not excepting themselves. They may have created masterpieces far superior to the fragments that survive . . . Apparently the arts were highly developed and widely practised eighteen thousand years ago. Perhaps there was a class of professional artists among paleolithic men; perhaps there were Bohemians starving in the less respectable caves, denouncing the commercial bourgeoisie, plotting the death of academies, and forging antiques.
, The Story of Civilization, Volume I: Our Oriental Heritage
1935
There is no telling how many more would have died had this war continued. Given the concentrated, large population of Bangladesh, the hostility aroused by the slaughters, and the distance separating West from East Pakistan, it is unlikely that the West Pakistanis could have prevailed indefinitely. As it was, however, India, the enemy of Pakistan, invaded East Pakistan, and the Pakistanis were quickly defeated. Bangladesh became independent, and the Indians withdrew. This was unquestionably a humanitarian intervention that put an end to a genocidal war that might have killed millions more. That India saw an opportunity to dismember its enemy Pakistan does not negate the fact that after assuring a Bangladeshi victory, it quickly pulled out. In this respect, the Indian action was . . . a “just war.” It should be noted that international hand-wringing and exhortation did not put a stop to the massacres; military action by a major power did. Flawed as such interventions may be, in extreme cases they may be the only way to prevent genocide.
, Why Not Kill Them All?
2006
They were doing really well. Claire hoped she could get them all across. John was fully aware he could do this alone. Thomas hoped he'd never have to.
, Thomas Was Alone
2012
“There is so much beauty in these hidden corners of the world, even if they have no purpose.”
“Perhaps they are beautiful because they have no purpose.”
, The Talos Principle
2014
This is the gilia the children call “evening snow,” and it is no use trying to improve on children’s names for wild flowers.
, The Land of Little Rain
1903
This is a perfect harbor. Outside the long breakwater the waves topple over one another roughly; within it the sea is a silver mirror. There, on the little island of Pharos, when Egypt was very old, Sostratus built his great lighthouse of white marble, five hundred feet high, as a beacon to all ancient mariners of the Mediterranean . . . Time and the nagging waters have washed it away, but a new lighthouse has taken its place, and guides the steamer through the rocks to the quays of Alexandria. Here that astonishing boy-statesman, Alexander, founded the subtle, polyglot metropolis that was to inherit the culture of Egypt, Palestine and Greece. In this harbor Caesar received without gladness the severed head of Pompey.
. . .
We stand where Caesar and Napoleon stood, and remember that fifty centuries look down upon us; where the Father of History came four hundred years before Caesar, and heard the tales that were to startle Pericles. A new perspective of time comes to us; two millenniums seem to fall out of the picture, and Caesar, Herodotus and ourselves appear for a moment contemporary and modern before these tombs that were more ancient to them than the Greeks are to us.
Nearby, the Sphinx, half lion and half philosopher, grimly claws the sand, and glares unmoved at the transient visitor and the eternal plain. It is a savage monument, as if designed to frighten old lechers and make children retire early. The lion body passes into a human head with prognathous jaws and cruel eyes; the civilization that built it had not quite forgotten barbarism. Once the sand covered it, and Herodotus, who saw so much that is not there, says not a word of it.
. . .
It is the memory and imagination of the beholder that, swollen with history, make these monuments great; in themselves they are a little ridiculous—vainglorious tombs in which the dead sought eternal life. Perhaps pictures have too much ennobled them . . . The sunset at Gizeh is greater than the Pyramids.
Throughout the greater part of its evolutionary history, the human population of Africa has lived in relatively small groups, demonstrating that people are perfectly capable of living peacefully in small communities for millennia without establishing cities and states. Indeed, the most distinctively African contribution to human history has been precisely the civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not in states. Since Africa was the cradle-land of humanity it would be comforting to believe that small peaceful communities were an ideal mode of existence.
, Africa: A Biography of the Continent
1996
“Well I’ll just wait for you here then. By the mausoleum. With my back turned and my defenses lowered.”
, Adventure Time
2010
“Who is Humpty Dumpty?” asked the little mice. And then the tree related the whole story; he could remember every single word, and the little mice were so delighted with it, that they were ready to jump to the top of the tree. The next night a great many more mice made their appearance, and on Sunday two rats came with them; but they said, it was not a pretty story at all, and the little mice were very sorry, for it made them also think less of it.
“Do you know only one story?” asked the rats.
“Only one,” replied the fir-tree; “I heard it on the happiest evening of my life; but I did not know I was so happy at the time.”
“We think it is a very miserable story,” said the rats. “Don’t you know any story about bacon, or tallow in the storeroom.”
“No,” replied the tree.
“Many thanks to you then,” replied the rats, and they marched off.