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fdea5ba
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People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.
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unknown
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Laurell K. Hamilton |
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82e953a
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Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.
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unknown
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Cornelia Funke |
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865233b
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The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.
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fear-unknown
unseen
unknown
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George R.R. Martin |
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3da6f5a
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The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds.
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fear
unknown
cutting
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Caroline Kettlewell |
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f6d811e
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In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.
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unknown
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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bb119d4
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"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of
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metaphor
history
science
illimitable
inexplicability
principia
solidity
origin-of-species
possessions
intellectual
business
biology
charles-darwin
goal
justification
darwin
infinite
knowledge
ocean
isaac-newton
newton
unknown
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Thomas Henry Huxley |
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7968f0d
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"Why do you like jellyfish so much?" I asked. "I don't know. I guess I think they're cute," she said. "But one thing did occur to me when I was really focused on them. What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two thirds of the earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about what's beneath the skin."
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the-world
sight
unknown
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Haruki Murakami |
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c373db3
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A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.
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unknown
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Carl Sagan |
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aa046c5
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"Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak. "Yes--and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape--then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect." "Oh? And what may that be?" "It is not a supernatural creature." "But it is all those other things?" "Yes." "Then I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not--so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will." "Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy--it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable."
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wisdon
supernatural
unknown
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Roger Zelazny |
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7ffc099
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They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
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happiness
omelas
walk-away
unknown
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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c765a05
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That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.
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illusion
world
unknown
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Virginia Woolf |
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0e16360
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So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall through I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without even beholding day.
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solitude
light
tower
forest
sky
waiting
longing
unknown
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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90c62aa
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Some people love their story that much even if it's of their own misery, even if it ties them to unhappiness, or they don't know how to stop telling it. Maybe it's about loving coherence more than comfort, but it might also be about fear--you have to die a little to be reborn, and death comes first, the death of a story, a familiar version of yourself
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story
comfort
fear
unknown
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Rebecca Solnit |
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db67227
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Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid.
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fear
darkness
fear-of-the-dark
not-knowing
unknown
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John Steinbeck |
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5636462
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The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.
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templars
venerate
mystery
unknown
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Umberto Eco |
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1904b65
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And though it be not so in the physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not always profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between two dim eternities,--the eternal past, the eternal future. The light shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn towards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and answers in her own expecting nature.
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mysticism
unknown
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Harriet Beecher Stowe |
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9b7bf9e
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We fear which we cannot see
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strawberry
ichigo
unknown
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Tite Kubo |
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11a9a0b
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When I was four I believed everything, accepted everything, and was scared of nothing. Now I was eight, and I believed in what I could see and was scared of anything I couldn't. Scared of things in the darkness, of things invisible to see.
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fear
darkness
knowledge
unknown
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Neil Gaiman |
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4229b2a
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Always, just beyond all these things, was the silver sea, the lace border around all land like the silence around sounds or the unknowns beyond all knowledge.
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unknown
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Rebecca Solnit |
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8bed9ca
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When you've managed to stumble directly into the heart of the unknown - either through the misdirection of others, or better yet, through your own creative ineptitude - there is no one there to hold your hand or tell you what to do. In those bad lost moments, in the times when are advised not to panic, we own the unknown, and the world belongs to us. The child within has full reign. Few of us are ever so free
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freedom
unknown
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Tim Cahill |
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284ddda
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The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us. Sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing to betray. The unbearable lightness of being --was that the goal?
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future
unbearable-lightness
veiled
heaviness
potential
unknown
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Milan Kundera |
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962e5b2
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The Father made men curious, some say to test our faith. It is my own abiding sin that whenever I come upon a door I must needs see what lies upon the farther side, but certain doors are best left unopened.
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faith
doors
unopened
fire-and-blood
curious
knowledge
unknown
sin
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George R.R. Martin |
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cd54c0f
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When they find what they don't like , they destroy it. Because it scares them-and you girls would scare them as much as anything they've ever seen.' 'Why?' asked Isobel. 'Because . . . because of what they believe.
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understanding
fear
beliefs
unknown
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Gordon Dahlquist |
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99fed81
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[...] what you see is likely to be less Black Swannish than what you do not see.
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seen
unseen
unknown
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |