Fantastic Lava Beds

Famous quotes containing the words fantastic, lava and/or beds:

    This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstacy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.
    Thomas Mann (1875–1955)

    We walk on molten lava on which the claw of a fly or the fall of a hair makes its impression, which being received, the mass hardens to flint and retains every impression forevermore.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Nature in darkness groans
    And men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night:
    Restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain
    Feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words
    Of stern philosophy & knead the bread of knowledge with tears & groans.
    William Blake (1757–1827)