philosophy

"Deus est Diabolus inversus."

"In the higher degrees of Scottish Freemasonry, there are two mottos whose meaning is related to some of the considerations we have outlined above: one is Post Tenebras Lux and the other Ordo ab Chao; and in truth their meanings are so closely connected as to be almost identical, although Ordo ab Chao is perhaps susceptible to a broader application. In fact, they both refer to initiatory "enlightenment", the first directly and the second consequentially, since it is the original vibration of Fiat Lux that determines the beginning of the cosmogonic process as a result of which "chaos" will be ordered to become the "cosmos". In traditional symbolism, darkness always represents the state of undeveloped potentialities that constitute chaos; and correlatively, light is related to the manifested world, in which these potentialities will be actualised, that is, to the “cosmos”, an actualisation that is determined or measured, at each moment of the process of manifestation, by the extension of the “sun's rays” that depart from the central point where the initial Fiat Lux was uttered. Light is therefore effectively “after darkness”, not only from a "macrocosmic" point of view, but also from a "microcosmic" point of view which is that of initiation, since, from this point of view, darkness represents the profane world from which the recipient comes, or the profane state in which he initially finds himself, until the precise moment when he becomes initiated by “receiving the light”. Through initiation, the being therefore passes “from darkness to light”, just as the world, at its origin (and the symbolism of “birth” is equally applicable in both cases), passed “from darkness to light” by virtue of the act of the creative and ordering Word; and consequently initiation is truly, according to a very general characteristic of traditional rites, an image of “what was done in the beginning”."

"In absolute clarity, one sees as little as in absolute darkness. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids, they are the same. Only in determined light—and light determined by darkness—therefore only in light obscured as in determined darkness—and darkness is determined by light—therefore only in illuminated darkness can anything be distinguished."

"The oxymoron is preferred by the mystic because it allows him to express something ineffable, because it is the best tool for talking about the unspeakable, because in the world of duality it creates the coincidentia oppositorum, which Nicola Cusano (1401-1464), in the context of his theology of the Incarnate Word, considered almost the least imperfect definition of God. The mystic, in his talk of God, punctuated by “improprietas”, “voces obscurae, horridae, inauditae”, seeks to touch the divine linguistically through a paroxysmal accumulation of oxymorons."

"Our history of philosophy can only be the Greco-Roman-Christian one. We know neither the time of formation nor any kind of history about other, Asian philosophemes. Moreover, the simple beginnings of Greek philosophy, which developed from mythology, makes it unimportant for our purpose to ask whether this mythology did or did not have a foreign origin... ."

"Arius, the heretic, reduced the Creator to the rank of creatures and did not recognize Him as consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, a single Being with Him and the Holy Spirit."

"Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan fell asleep. He had a dream, and in that dream, soaring over the earth, he saw it covered with angels in revolt, beautiful as gods whose eyes darted lightning. And from pole to pole one single cry, formed of a myriad cries, mounted towards him, filled with hope and love. And Satan said: "Let us go forth! Let us seek the ancient adversary in his high abode." And he led the countless host of angels over the celestial plains. And Satan was cognizant of what took place in the heavenly citadel. When news of this second revolt came thither, the Father said to the Son: "The irreconcilable foe is rising once again. Let us take heed to ourselves, and in this, our time of danger, look to our defences, lest we lose our high abode." And the Son, consubstantial with the Father, replied: "We shall triumph under the sign that gave Constantine the victory.""

"If we were to ask which country is the most corrupt in the world, the first answer to come to mind would be dictated by the perceived level of corruption. Perhaps one might think of Mexico, of South American countries, of African countries, of the Middle East or Italy. But the most corrupt is the UK. It’s not a type of a corruption that concerns civil servants, policemen or mayors; it’s a type of a corruption that is consubstantial to economic system. The British economic system feeds itself on corruption. And in the midst of this, the and its citizens have not woken up to the plight that their country is going through. A plight greater than earthquakes, greater than terror attacks."

"Inhuman solitude made of sand and God. Surely only two kinds of people can bear to live in such desert: lunatics and prophets. The mind topples here not from fright but from sacred awe; sometimes it collapses downward, losing human stability, sometimes it springs upward, enters heaven, sees God face to face, touches the hem of His blazing garment without being burned, hears what He says, and taking this, slings it into men's consciousness. Only in the desert do we see the birth of these fierce, indomitable souls who rise up in rebellion even against God himself and stand before Him fearlessly, their minds in resplendent consubstantiality with the skirts of the Lord. God sees them and is proud, because in them his breath has not vented its force; in them, God has not stooped to becoming a man."

"The German is just the opposite. It comes from a romantic faith, from the capacity for divinizing a race. Therefore it is just to assert that Hitlerism is a mystical movement, very consubstantial with German psychology. The Germans can sing in choruses very well... yet all the movements of insubordination, of rebellion in the world, in the Spartacus manner, have come from Germany. Neither can the totalitarian state save us from the invasion of barbarians, all the more because the truly totalitarian state cannot exist""

"Just as the ritual of life has materialized on earth since ancient times, persisting even today in the gentle light of the sun, the poetic expression establishes itself in our tangible world like a gentle sunray that confirms that the human destiny originated in the being. However, as one can notice, in the eternal corroborative kaleidoscope of existence, the contemporary society is nothing but the fruit of the creative power of the wise man that intensely investigates the direct reality, from one end to the other, to the most hidden details, and imagines it in its infinity, even if, ignoring the play with the nothingness and the barriers of the heart, today there is no doubt that the same reality is indefinitely broader than reason and than man’s illusory ambitions to truly appropriate the mysteries of the universe. The rhetoric of my (purely metaphysical) verse does nothing but interrogate the vast universe of the human condition, consubstantially transposed by the instance of the poetic thought on the eternal winding path of the natural intramundane dimension."

"Paul VI's intention regarding the liturgy, regarding the vulgarisation of the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy so that it would coincide more or less with the Protestant liturgy... with the Protestant Supper. And further on: "... I repeat that Paul VI did everything in his power to bring the Catholic Mass – beyond the Council of Trent – closer to the Protestant Supper. He was particularly helped by Monsignor Bugnini, who did not always enjoy his confidence on this point. [...] Of course, I did not attend the Calvinist Supper, but I did attend Paul VI's Mass. And Paul VI's Mass presents itself first and foremost as a banquet, does it not? It insists very much on the aspect of participation in a banquet, and much less on the notion of sacrifice, of ritual sacrifice, in the face of God, while the priest shows only his back. So I do not think I am mistaken in saying that the intention of Paul VI and of the new liturgy that bears his name is to ask the faithful for greater participation in the Mass, to give a greater place to Sacred Scripture and a lesser place to everything else in it, some say “magical”, others “consubstantial consecration”, [correcting himself] transubstantiation, which is the Catholic faith. In other words, Paul VI had the ecumenical intention of removing – or at least correcting, attenuating – what was too “Catholic”, in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and of bringing the Catholic Mass – I repeat – closer to the Calvinist Mass."

"The concept seemed ambiguous to me, and the emphasis with which "pastorality" was attributed to the current Council was somewhat suspect: was it not meant to implicitly say that the previous Councils did not intend to be "pastoral" or had not been pastoral enough? Had it not had pastoral relevance to make it clear that Jesus of Nazareth was God and consubstantial with the Father, as defined at Nicaea? Had it not had pastoral relevance to clarify the realism of the Eucharistic presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass, as had been done at Trent?. There was a danger of no longer remembering that the first and irreplaceable mercy for lost humanity is, according to the clear teaching of Revelation, the mercy of truth, a mercy that cannot be exercised without the explicit, firm, constant condemnation of every misrepresentation and every alteration of the deposit of faith, which must be preserved. St Thomas Aquinas noted this in the 'Summa contra Gentiles' (I, 2): the task of theology is to "manifest the truth professed by the Catholic faith, eliminating errors contrary to it"."

"The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors."

"The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior."

"In the interpretation of figurative passages, let the following canon be observed. If the passage be preceptive, either forbidding some flagitious deed and some heinous crime, or commanding something useful and beneficent: then such passage is not figurative. But, if the passage seems, either to command some flagitious deed and some heinous crime, or to forbid something useful and beneficent: then such passage is figurative. Thus, for example, Christ says: Unless ye shall eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood; ye shall have no life in you. Now, in these words, he seems to command a heinous crime or a flagitious deed. Therefore the passage is a figure, enjoining us to communicate in the passion of our Lord, and admonishing us to lay it up sweetly and usefully in our memory because, for us, his flesh was crucified and wounded. On the other hand, Scripture says: If thy enemy shall hunger, give him food; if he shall thirst, give him drink. Here, without all doubt, an act of beneficence is enjoined."

"Early man... sought to identify himself with the animals he especially admired, and when he ate their flesh it was not alone to nourish his body but also to enrich his psyche with their virtues. ...That aspiration... was to lead... to the physical horrors of cannibalism on the one hand and to the intellectual horrors of transubstantiation on the other. At a much earlier period it was to set up the curious institution of the totem... The falcon-god Horus, of the Egyptians, probably began as such a totem, and so did the cow Hathor and the serpent Neith."

"The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place.. .All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work into contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

"Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors."

"The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation...claims...the "Whole substance" of the wine is converted into the blood of Christ,; the appearance of wine that remains is "merely accidental", "inhering in no substance". Transubstantiation is colloquially taught as meaning that the wine "literally" turns into the blood of Christ. Whether in its obfuscatory Aristotelian or its franker colloquial form, the claim of transubstantiation can be made only if we do serious violence to the normal meanings of words like 'substance' and 'literally'."

"They had only three sacraments, baptism, eucharist, and the orders; and would not admit transubstantiation in the manner the Roman Catholics do. They knew nothing of purgatory; and the saints they said were not admitted to the presence of GOD, but were kept in a third place till the day of judgment. Their priests were permitted to marry, at least once in their life. Their rite was the Chaldaean or Syrian.… The uncontrolled power of Papal Rome had not then reached the Syrian churches in Travencore: they preserved their independence, and remained for ages unmolested, until the maritime discovery of India by de Gama: after which, priests and inquisitors from Goa disturbed their peace, burnt their unadulterated versions of the sacred scriptures, and compelled many of their churches to acknowledge the pope’s supremacy."

"'Twas God the Word that spake it, He took the Bread and brake it: And what that Word did make it, That I believe and take it."

"Nothing announced so sudden a destruction. The people in general seemed attached to the ceremonies of catholicism; but there are bodies struck with lightning, who seem still to preserve their life and organization, but touch them, and they crumble into dust. The people had the appearance of believing in the mass, in transubstantiation, and in the most received dogmas of the catholic faith; but the people did not believe in them at all. All the sarcasms of Voltaire against the priests, all the pleasantries of the author of the Pucelle, had reached them... There was only a single step to take to lay the revolutionary axe to the root of altars loaded with gold and silver: had they been naked, they would have escaped the destroying hand. It is not their overthrow which ought to astonish, but it is having seen them fall in one day, with all the circumstances of the most profound contempt or hatred. The progress of irreligion was extremely rapid amongst the vulgar, who armed themselves at once with hammers and levers to break the sacred images before which six months back they bent the knee. They were easily persuaded that it was a useful thing to transform the temples into magazines, golden cups and crosses into money, the iron grates into bullets, and the copper cherubim into cannon. The mob thought, that after the decree of national sovereignty, the right of doing every thing, of commanding every thing, and of not obeying, was fully devolved to them alone."

"To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is “really” a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. ... While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation."

"The victory of orthodox Christian doctrine over classical thought was to some extent a , for the theology that triumphed over Greek philosophy has continued to be shaped ever since by the language and the thought of classical metaphysics. For example, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that "in the sacrament of the altar... the bread is transubstantiated into the body [of Christ]." ...Most of the theological expositions of the term "" have interpreted "substance" [according] to the meaning given this term ...in the fifth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics; transubstantiation, then, would appear to be tied to the acceptance of Aristotelian metaphysics or even of Aristotelian physics. ...Transubstantiation is an individual instance of what has been called the problem of "the hellenization of Christianity.""

"It seems to me that art is a great miracle-it is the showing forth of the Holy Spirit transubstantiation. It is to find and proclaim the poetry of life, without which there is no life."

"And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."

"To understand transubstantiation, let's turn to a related word that is more familiar to us: transformation. Transformation means changing from one form to another, while transubstantiation means changing from one substance to another. Let's take an example. When we see a woman leaving the hairdresser's with a whole new hairstyle, we sometimes spontaneously exclaim: ‘What a transformation!’. No one would dream of exclaiming, ‘What a transubstantiation!’. And rightly so. Her form and external appearance have changed, but not her inner being and personality. If she was intelligent before, she is intelligent now; if she was not intelligent before, I am sorry to say that she is not intelligent now either. Appearances have changed, but not substance. In the Eucharist, exactly the opposite happens: substance changes, but appearances do not. The bread is transubstantiated, but not transformed; in fact, its appearance (form, taste, colour, weight) remains the same, while its profound reality has changed, it has become the body of Christ. The promise of Jesus heard at the beginning [of the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time] has been fulfilled: "The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.""

"This only will I speak, and that in a word: they which brought in transubstantiations, masses, calling upon saints, sole life, purgatory, images, vows, trifles, follies, babbles, into the church of God, have delivered new things, and which the scriptures never heard of. Whatsoever they cry or crack, they bring not a jot out of the word of God... These they honour instead of the scriptures, and force them to the people instead of the word of God: upon these men suppose their salvation and the sum of religion to be grounded."

"But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery."

"The Lord ... said: Unless a man shall eat my flesh, he shall not have in himself eternal life. Certain of his disciples, the seventy to wit, were scandalised, and said: This is a hard saying; who can understand it? And they departed from him, and walked with him no more. His saying ... seemed to them a hard one. They received it foolishly: they thought of it carnally. For they fancied, that the Lord was going to cut from his own body certain morsels and to give those morsels to them. Hence they said: This is a hard saying. But they themselves were hard: not the saying. For, if, instead of being hard, they had been mild, they would have ... learned from him what those learned, who remained while they departed. For, when the twelve disciples had remained with him after the others had departed, ... he instructed them, and said unto them: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words, which I speak unto you, are spirit and life. As if he had said: Understand spiritually what I have spoken. You are Not about to eat this identical body, which you see; and you are Not about to drink this identical blood, which they who crucify me will pour out. I have commended unto you a certain sacrament. This, if spiritually understood, will quicken you. Though it must be celebrated visibly, it must be understood invisibly."

"Mr. Gibbon has much to learn concerning the gospel before he can be properly qualified to write against it. Hitherto he seems to have been acquainted with nothing but the corrupt establishments of what is very improperly called Christianity; whereas it is incumbent upon him to read and study the New Testament for himself. There he will find nothing like Platonism, but doctrines in every respect the reverse of that system of philosophy, which weak and undistinguishing christians afterwards incorporated with it. Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the same reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement."

"Intelligence...has quietly stripped from our moral valuations that half-supernatural, half-aesthetic halo which is but the shrunken religious involucrum wherein they came into the world. The "problem of evil" has already become the problem not of its its toleration by God, but of its diminution by Man."

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?"

"Matter, being fecund in all attributes, is able also to engender evil. I put aside, therefore, O Asclepios and Ammon, the question asked by many: "Could not God hinder evil in the nature of things?" There is absolutely nothing to say to them; but for you I will pursue the discourse begun, and I will give the explanation. They affirm that God ought to have preserved the world from evil; now, evil is in the world as an integral part of it. The sovereign God indeed provided against it inasmuch as was reasonable and possible, when He bestowed upon humanity sentiment, knowledge, and intelligence. By these faculties solely, which place us above other animals, we may escape the snares of evil and vice."

"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"

"Knowledge can only be genuinely transitional if it is biographical knowledge. ... Biographicity means that we can redesign again and again, from scratch, the contours of our life within the specific contexts in which we (have to) spend it, and that we experience these contexts as shapeable and designable. ... The main issue is to decipher the ‘surplus meanings’ of our biographical knowledge, and that in turn means perceiving the potentiality of our unlived lives."

"Transformative learning is an adult dimension of reason assessment involving the validation and reformulation of meaning structures."

"It is important to note that a form of anthropocentrism remains in Heidegger, according to whom: “Man is not the Lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this ‘less’; rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being”. Although Man is not the “Lord of beings anymore,” he is still granted the privileged position of “shepherd of Being.”"

""Now, I would like just to give a quick visual perspective on the idea that we are at the center of the universe. There is a recent Hubble Space Telescope photograph of an obscure edge of the Virgo Cluster some 45 million light-years away. This is a giant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, but almost everything else you see, all these other things, are not stars in our galaxy, and not galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, but galaxies behind the Virgo Cluster; and there are some hundred billion other galaxies in the known universe. Now, suppose you were an intergalactic traveler seeking interesting galaxies, and you were told that the beings who are the point of the universe live on one of those galaxies. 'See that little one right there? That's the center of the universe! And they are the reason the whole universe of 100 billion galaxies was made. Just ask them!' What's your sense of them?"

"Forever occupied and diverted by its factions and its politicians, in their local intrigues for the acquisition of political power, the Ship of State sailed proudly on, too blinded by her preoccupation and too reliant in her strength to bestow a thought upon the perils of the sea. She sighted afar the foam of the maelstrom, and tossed her haughty pennants in sovereign disdain of its power. But its current was around her, and she glided unconsciously to her doom. In vain the exercise of her giant strength; in vain that her factions, in happy forgetfulness of their petty antipathies, united their powers to save! Too late! She was hurled, helpless and struggling, to ruin and annihilation; and as she sank, engulfed, she carried with her the prestige of a race; for in America the representatives of the one race of man, which, in its relation to the family of men, had borne upon its crest the emblem of sovereign power since the dawn of history, saw now the ancestral diadem plucked from its proud repose, to shed its lustre upon an alien crown. Thus passed away the glory of the Union of States, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century."

"Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity, with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope; What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were forged the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock— 'Tis of the wave, and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock, and tempest roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee!"

"W. J. Oates & Eugene O'Neill Jr., eds. The Complete Greek Drama, Vol. 2 (New York: Random House 1938), p. 610"

"O ship, new billows threaten to bear thee out to sea again. Beware! Haste valiantly to reach the haven! Seest thou not how thy bulwarks are bereft of oars, how thy shattered mast and yards are creaking in the driving gale, and how thy hull without a girding-rope can scarce withstand the overmastering sea? Thy canvas is no longer whole, nor hast thou gods to call upon when again beset by trouble. Though thou be built of Pontic pine, a child of far-famed forests, and though thou boast thy stock and useless name, yet the timid sailor puts no faith in gaudy sterns. Beware lest thou become the wild gale’s sport! Do thou, who wert not long ago to me a source of worry and of weariness, but art now my love and anxious care, avoid the seas that course between the glistening Cyclades!"

"CREON: No man can be fully known, in soul and spirit and mind, until he hath been seen versed in rule and law-giving. For if any, being supreme guide of the State, cleaves not to the best counsels, but, through some fear, keeps his lips locked, I hold, and have ever held, him most base; and if any makes a friend of more account than his fatherland, that man hath no place in my regard. For I—be Zeus my witness, who sees all things always—would not be silent if I saw ruin, instead of safety, coming to the citizens; nor would I ever deem the country's foe a friend to myself; remembering this, that our country is the ship that bears us safe, and that only while she prospers in our voyage can we make true friends."

"CHORUS: And now a sea of troubles, as it were, driveth on its billows; as one wave sinks, another, of triple crest, it reareth aloft, even that which now seethes about the ship of State. Narrow the space that stretches between as a defence—no wider than a wall."

"SOCRATES to ADEIMANTUS: Conceive the captain of a ship, taller by a head and shoulders than any of the crew, yet a little deaf, a little blind, and rather ignorant of the seaman’s art. The sailors want to steer, although they know nothing of the art; and they have a theory that it cannot be learned. If the helm is refused them, they drug the captain’s posset, bind him hand and foot, and take possession of the ship. He who joins in the mutiny is termed a good pilot and what not; they have no conception that the true pilot must observe the winds and the stars, and must be their master, whether they like it or not;—such an one would be called by them fool, prater, star-gazer. This is my parable; which I will beg you to interpret for me to those gentlemen who ask why the philosopher has such an evil name, and to explain to them that not he, but those who will not use him, are to blame for his uselessness. The philosopher should not beg of mankind to be put in authority over them. The wise man should not seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every man, whether rich or poor, must knock at the door of the physician when he has need of him. Now the pilot is the philosopher—he whom in the parable they call star-gazer, and the mutinous sailors are the mob of politicians by whom he is rendered useless."

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o’er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway, That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey."

"XANTHIAS: [...] But what was your dream? Let me hear.SOSIAS: Oh! it is a dream of high import. It has reference to the hull of the State; to nothing less.XANTHIAS: Tell it to me quickly; show me its very keel.SOSIAS: In my first slumber I thought I saw sheep, wearing cloaks and carrying staves, met in assembly on the ; a rapacious whale was haranguing them and screaming like a pig that is being grilled.XANTHIAS: Faugh! faugh!SOSIAS: What's the matter?XANTHIAS: Enough, enough, spare me. Your dream stinks vilely of old leather.SOSIAS: Then this scoundrelly whale seized a balance and set to weighing ox-fat.XANTHIAS: Alas! it's our poor Athenian people, whom this accursed beast wishes to cut up and despoil of their fat."

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s moulds, all germins spill at once That make ingrateful man!"