Omega quotes

“It may prove a mistake;” or, “It will pass on one side;” or, again: “It will amount to nothing; we shall get off with a fright,” and other like assurances.

But expectation and uncertainty are often more terrible than the catastrophe itself.

A brutal blow knocks us down once for all, prostrating us more or less completely. We come to our senses, we make the best of it, we recover, and take up life again.

By the sudden shock of collision, crushed to death? By fire, the conflagration of a world? By suffocation, the poisoning of the atmosphere? What torture awaited humanity? Apprehension was perhaps more frightful than the reality itself. The mind cannot suffer beyond a certain limit.

To suffer by inches, to ask every evening what the morning may bring, is to suffer a thousand deaths.

Terror, that terror which congeals the blood in the veins, which annihilates the courage, haunted the shuddering soul like an invisible spectre.

What was the use of occupying oneself with business affairs, with questions of internal or foreign policy, of revenue or of reform, if the end of the world was at hand? Politics, indeed! Did one even remember to have ever taken any interest in them?

The courts themselves had no cases; one does not murder when one expects the end of the world.

Humanity no longer attached importance to anything; its heart beat furiously, as if about to stop forever. Every face was emaciated, every countenance discomposed, and haggard with sleeplessness. Feminine coquetry alone held out, but in a superficial, hesitating, furtive manner, without thought of the morrow.

Methods were devised for the isolation of this gas from the nitrogen and its storage in immense vessels of glass hermetically sealed. A clever pharmacist asserted that he had condensed it in pastilles, and in a fortnight expended eight millions in advertising.

Thus commerce made capital out of everything, even universal death.

All hope was not, however, abandoned. People disputed, trembled, grew anxious, shuddered, died even—but hoped on.

A clever pharmacist asserted that he had condensed it in pastilles, and in a fortnight expended eight millions in advertising. Thus commerce made capital out of everything, even universal death. All hope was not, however, abandoned.

People disputed, trembled, grew anxious, shuddered, died even⁠—but hoped on.

The latest news was to the effect that the comet, developing, as it approached the thermal and electric influences of the Sun, would have at the moment of impact a diameter sixty-five times that of the Earth, or 828,000 kilometers.

Doubtless, we may, and should, expect some catastrophe, but as for the end of the world, really, everything would lead us to believe that it will not take place in this manner.

Worlds die of old age, not by accident, and, ladies, you know better than I that the world is far from being old.

“Gentlemen, I see before me representatives of every social sphere, from the highest to the most humble. Before a danger so apparent, threatening the destruction of all life, it is not surprising that every business operation should be absolutely suspended.

Is the thought of our dying together so disagreeable? This should prove rather a consolation to our egotism. No, it is the thought that a stupendous catastrophe is to shorten our lives by a few days or years.

Life is short, and each clings to the smallest fraction of it; it would even seem, from what one hears, that each would prefer to see the whole world perish, provided he himself survived, rather than die alone and know the world was saved.

This is pure egoism. But, gentlemen, I am firm in the belief that this will be only a partial disaster, of the highest scientific importance, but leaving behind it historians to tell its story. There will be a collision, shock, and local ruin.

As for me, I repeat, terrestrial life is in danger, and I see not one only, but two, three and four mortal perils confronting it.

Escape will be a miracle, and for centuries no one has believed in miracles.

”

This statement produced a sensation of relief among the audience; it was like a slender ray of light in the middle of a somber night.

A single day of respite is of enormous importance to one condemned to death.

Already chimerical projects formed in every mind; the catastrophe was put off; it was a kind of reprieve. It was not remembered that this diversion was of a purely cosmographic nature, relating to the date and not to the fact of the collision.

The audience had become wonderfully tranquillized. No sooner had the orator left the platform and received the congratulations of his colleagues than an animated conversation began on every side. A sort of peace took possession of every mind.

People talked of the end of the world as they would of the fall of a ministry, or the coming of the swallows⁠—dispassionately and disinterestedly.

A fatality put off 40,000 centuries does not really affect us at all.

When its light had entirely disappeared the poor child, completely carried away by terror, began to cry and call for help. His tears flowed again when the first ray of light reappeared. Reassured, he clasped his hands, crying, “O, beautiful sun!”

Is not the cry of this child the cry of humanity?

So long as eclipses were not known to be the natural consequences of the motion of the Moon about the Earth, and before it was understood that their occurrence could be predicted with the utmost precision, it was natural that they should have produced a …

for we know that our humble planet is but an island in the infinite, that human history has thus far been founded on pure illusions, and that the dignity of man consists in his intellectual and moral worth.

Is not the destiny and sovereign end of the human mind the exact knowledge of things, the search after truth?

During the nineteenth century, evil prophets, more or less sincere, have twenty-five times announced the end of the world, basing their prophecies upon cabalistic calculations destitute of serious foundation. Like predictions will recur so long as the race exists.

The comet itself emitted a light far different from the sunlight reflected by the enveloping vapors; and its flames, shooting forth in ever-increasing volume, gave it the appearance of a monster, precipitating itself upon the Earth to devour it.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this spectacle was the absence of all sound.

At Paris, as elsewhere, during that eventful night, the crowd instinctively maintained silence, spellbound by an indescribable fascination, endeavoring to catch some echo of the celestial thunder—but not a sound was heard.

The moon rose full, showing green upon the fiery background of the sky, but without brilliancy and casting no shadows.

The night was no more night, for the stars had disappeared, and the sky glowed with an intense light.

The comet was approaching the Earth with a velocity of 41,000 meters per second, or 2,460 kilometers per minute, that is, 147,600 kilometers per hour;

Contrary to all expectation, Friday and Saturday, the 13th and 14th of July were, like the preceding days, wonderfully beautiful; the sun shone in a cloudless sky, the air was tranquil, the temperature rather high, but cooled by a light, refreshing breeze.

Nature was in a joyous mood, the country was luxuriant with beauty, the streams murmured in the valleys, the birds sang in the woods; but the dwelling places of man were heartrendingly sad.

Humanity was prostrated with terror, and the impassible calm of nature stood over against the agonizing fear of the human heart in painful and harrowing contrast.

Amid the universal plaint of nature, this luminous center rose in the west almost at the same time with the full moon, which climbed the sky with it like a sacrificial victim ascending the funeral pyre.

The moon paled as it mounted higher, but the comet increased in brightness as the sun sank below the western horizon, and now, when the hour of night had come, it reigned supreme, a vaporous, scarlet sun, with flames of yellow and green, like immense extended wings.

To the terrified spectator it seemed some enormous giant, taking sovereign possession of earth and sky.

The days of July 13th and 14th had passed without incident, but with what anxiety the fateful night was awaited! Never, perhaps, had there been so magnificent a sunset, never a sky so pure!

The orb of day seemed to go down in a sea of gold and purple; its red disc disappeared below the horizon, but the stars did not rise⁠—and night did not come!

To the daylight succeeded a day of cometary and lunar splendor, illuminated by a dazzling light, recalling that of the aurora borealis, but more intense, emanating from an immense blazing focus, which had not been visible during the day because it had been below the …

that the bolide had not destroyed Rome at all, but had fallen quite a distance outside the city. St. Peter and the Vatican had been miraculously preserved. But hundreds of millions of copies were sold in every country of the world.

It was an excellent stroke of business.

The crisis had passed. Little by little, men recovered their self-possession, rejoicing in the mere fact of living.

The women held their ground; they felt that truth was on their side, but their firmness would deliver humanity from the slavery which oppressed it, and that they could not fail of victory. To the passionate objurgations of certain men, they replied:

“No; we will have nothing more to do with fools;”

and, if this state of affairs continued, they had decided to keep their vow, or to emigrate to America, where, centuries before, the military system had disappeared.

The forests, sacrificed to agriculture and the manufacture of paper, had entirely disappeared.

The legal rate of interest had fallen to one-half of one percent.

Electricity had taken the place of steam. Railroads and pneumatic tubes were still in use, but only for the transportation of freight. Voyages were made preferably by dirigible balloons, aeroplanes and airships, especially in the daytime.

death where was life, and life where was death; and everywhere sunk into eternal oblivion all which had once constituted the glory and greatness of nations.

If today one of us should emigrate to Mars, he would find himself more at home than if, after the lapse of these future ages, he should return to the Earth.

Yes! all this progress, all this knowledge, all this happiness and glory, must one day be swallowed up in oblivion, and the voice of history itself be forever silenced.

Life had a beginning: it must have an end.

The sun of human hopes had risen, had ascended victoriously to its meridian, it was now to set and to disappear in endless night.

Written history dates from yesterday. Cut and polished flints have been found at Paris, proving the presence of man on the banks of the Seine long before the first historic record of the Gauls.

The Parisians of the close of the nineteenth century walk upon ground consecrated by more than ten thousand years of ancestry.

What remains of all who have swarmed in this forum of the world? What is left of the Romans, the Greeks, and the Asiatics, whose empires lasted for centuries? What remains of the millions who have existed? Not even a handful of ashes.

This conception of the planet’s future conforms to our present knowledge of the universe.

Doubtless, our logic is radically incomplete, puerile even, in comparison with the real and eternal Truth, and might be justly compared with that of two ants talking together about the history of France.

But, confessing the modesty which befits the finite in presence of the infinite, and acknowledging our nothingness as compared with the universe, we cannot avoid the necessity of appearing logical to ourselves;

It was evident that the race was irrevocably doomed. Science had disappeared with scientists, art with artists, and the survivors lived only upon the past. The heart knew no more hope, the spirit no ambition.

The light was in the past; the future was an eternal night.

All was over. The glories of days gone by had forever vanished.

and she seemed to see, once more, the last fêtes of a brilliant society, as if reflected from the surface of some distant mirror. Then, on awakening, these magic memories faded into the somber reality.

Alone! Alone in the world, and tomorrow death, without having known life!

To struggle against this unavoidable fate was useless;

When the young man reached her side, he stopped, knelt, and took her hand in his, saying simply:

“You called me. I have come.”

And then he added: “I have known you for a long time. I knew that you existed, I have often seen you; you are the constant thought of my heart, but I did not dare to come.”

What illustrious historians have celebrated the heroes of the world’s progress, the glories of war, the conquests of mind and of spirit! Yet after so many centuries of labor and struggle, there remained only two palpitating hearts, the kisses of two lovers.

All had perished except love; and love, the supreme sentiment, endured, shining like an inextinguishable beacon over the immense ocean of the vanished ages.

Death! They did not dream of it. Did they not suffice for each other? What if the cold froze their very marrow? Did they not possess in their hearts a warmth which defied the cold of nature?

“Fear nothing,” it said. “I come to seek you. No, you shall not die. No one has ever died.

Time flows into eternity; eternity remains.

“I was Cheops, King of Egypt, and I reigned over this country in the early days of the world.

The Earth was dead. The other planets also had died one after the other. The Sun was extinguished. But the stars still shone; there were still suns and worlds.

In the measureless duration of eternity, time, an essentially relative conception, is determined by each world, and even in each world this conception is dependent upon the consciousness of the individual. Each world measures its own duration.

The world dead, all the planets dead, the Sun extinguished. The solar system annihilated, time itself suspended.

Time lapses into eternity. But eternity remains, and time is born again.

Before the existence of the Earth, throughout an eternity, suns and worlds existed, peopled with beings like ourselves. Millions of years before the Earth was, they were.

Before the existence of the Earth, throughout an eternity, suns and worlds existed, peopled with beings like ourselves. Millions of years before the Earth was, they were.

The past of the universe has been as brilliant as the present, the future will be as the past, the present is of no importance.

In examining the past history of the Earth, we might go back to a time when our planet shone in space, a veritable sun, appearing as Jupiter and Saturn do now, shrouded in a dense atmosphere charged with warm vapors;

Far from being eternal, the Earth on which we live has had a beginning.

In eternity a hundred million years, a thousand million years or centuries, are as a day.

There is an eternity behind us and before us, and all apparent duration is but a point.