Miscellaneous Quotes

"No one has ever known or will ever know the vastness of the roots of that ancient tree."

--Odin describing the World-Tree Yggrdrasil, from the ELDER EDDA


"The Mundane Shell is a vast Concave Earth,
an immense Harden'd Shadow of all things upon our Vegetated Earth,

Enlarg'd into Dimension and deform'd into indefinite Space,
In Twenty-seven Heavens and all their Hells,
with Chaos And Ancient Night and Purgatory.

It is a cavernous Earth Of labyrinthine intricacy,
twenty-seven folds of Opaqueness,
And finishes where the lark mounts."

--William Blake, Selection From Milton


Presently, I caught sight of a cave near-hand, with a narrow doorway, so I entered, and seeing a great stone close to the mouth, I rolled it up and stopped the entrance, saying to myself, "I am safe here for the night, and as soon as it is day, I will go forth and see what Destiny will do." Then I looked within the cave and saw at the upper end a great serpent brooding on her eggs, at which my flesh quaked and my hair stood on end, but I raised my eyes to Heaven and, committing my case to fate and lot, abode all that night without sleep till daybreak, when I rolled back the stone from the mouth of the cave and went forth, staggering like a drunken man and giddy with watching and fear and hunger.

--Sir Richard Francis Burton, THE SECOND VOYAGE OF SINDBAD THE SAILOR, from THE ARABIAN NIGHTS


Then he thought within himself: "I too will try the virtue of those magical words and see if at my bidding the door will open and close." So he called out aloud, "Open, Sesame!" And no sooner had he spoken than straightway the portal flew open and he entered within. He saw a large cavern and a vaulted, in height equaling the stature of a full-grown man, and it was hewn in the live stone and, lighted up with light that came through air holes and bull's-eyes in the upper surface of the rock which formed the roof. He had expected to find naught save outer gloom in this robbers' den, and he was surprised to see the whole room filled with bales of all manner stuffs, and heaped up from sole to ceiling with camelloads of silks and brocades and embroidered cloths and mounds on mounds of varicolored carpetings. Besides which, he espied coins golden and silvern without measure or account, some piled upon the ground and others bound in learthern bags and sacks. Seeing these goods and moneys in such abundance, Ali Bab determined in his mind that not during a few years only but for many generations thieves must have stored their gains and spoils in this place.

--Sir Richard Francis Burton, ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES, from THE ARABIAN NIGHTS


Hereat the Moroccan, the magician, whose only object was the lamp and none other, began to insist upon Aladdin giving it to him at once. But the lad (forasmuch as he had placed it at the bottom of his breast pocket and his other pouches, being full of gems, bulged outward) could not reach it with his fingers to hand it over, so the wizard after much vain persistency in requiring what his nephew was unable to give fell to raging with furious rage and to demanding the lamp, whilst Aladdin could not get at it. Yet had the lad promised truthfully that he would give it up as soon as he might reach ground, without lying thought or ill intent. But when the Moorman saw that he would not hand it over, he waxed wroth with wrath exceeding and cut off all his hopes of winning it. So he conjured and adjured and cast incense a-middlemost the fire, when forthright the slab made a cover of itself, and by the might of magic lidded the entrance. The earth buried the stone as it was aforetime, and Aladdin, unable to issue forth, remained underground.

--Sir Richard Francis Burton, ALLADIN,or THE WONDERFUL LAMP, from THE ARABIAN NIGHTS


There is nothing more powerful than this attraction toward the abyss.

--Jules Verne, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH


He who fights with monsters might take care least he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

--Friedrich Nietzsche, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL


"In the cave you forget that there is an outer world somewhere above you. The hours have no meaning; time ceases to be; no thought of labor, no sense of responsibility, no twinge of conscience intrudes to suggest the existence you have left. You walk in some limbo beyond the confines of actual life, yet no nearer the world of spirits."

--A Mammoth Cave visitor, 1855.


Some scientists now speculate that the total biomass of deep subsurface life may exceed the total biomass of living material on the Earth's surface!

--David W. Wolfe, TALES FROM THE UNDERGROUND


It now appears that the habitable space and life forms on Earth may be more vast, by several orders of magnitude, than we ever imagined. We must learn to accept the fact that the sun-warmed surface we are so familiar with is just one of the stages on which life performs its unique feats. Within the context of life in the universe as a whole, the Earth's solar-powered surface may be an almost insignificant component, not center stage.

--David W. Wolfe, TALES FROM THE UNDERGROUND


The more we learn about the spectacular biodiversity of the undeground, the more questions we come up with. How and where did it all begin? How did surface and subsurface creatures co-evolve such an efficient recycling system, one that has sustained life on Earth for three and a half billion years?

--David W. Wolfe, TALES FROM THE UNDERGROUND


Accompanying the words with the lyre, he sung, "O deities of the underworld, to whom all we who live must come, hear my words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus, nor to try my strength against Cerberus, the three-headed dog with snaky hair who guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years the poisonous viper's fang has brought to an untimely end. Love has led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the thread of Eurydice's life. We all are destined to you, and sooner or later must pass to your domain. She too, when she shall have filled her term of life, will rightly be yours. But 'til then grant her to me, I beseech you. If you deny one, I cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of us both."

As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water; Ixion's wheel stood still; the vulture ceased to tear the giant's liver; the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve; and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist, and Pluto himself gave way.

--Thomas Bulfinch , Orpheus and Eurydice, THE AGE OF FABLE, 1855


To you this tale refers,
Who seek to lead your mind
Into the upper day;
For he who overcome should turn back his gaze
Towards the Tartarean cave,
Whatever excellence he takes with him
He loses when he looks on those below.


--Boethius, CONSOLATION 3.52


"The words which make up the human language are inadequate for those who venture into the depths of the earth."

--Jules Verne, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH


The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.

--Vergil, THE AENEID


The truth of nature lieth in certain deep mines and caves.

--Democritus


No solitude is comparable to the bowels of the earth, no night so dark as the blackness underground.

--Norbert Casteret


Below ground everything seems to have come from another world, and surprises and hallucinations are constant.

--Norbert Casteret