The Dead Sea Apes is a fable of dwellers by the Dead Sea who, according to the Muslim tradition, were transformed into apes because they turned a deaf ear to God's message to them by the lips of Moses. It is also a metaphor used, for instance by Carlyle, describing people in modern times to whom the universe, with all its serious voices, seems to have become a weariness and a humbug. See "Past and Present", Bk. iii. chap. 3.
Famous quotes containing the words dead, sea and/or apes:
“The dead level of provincial existence.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening. Water ran down hill and birds nested.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous for its prey.”
—Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)