Early Man Quotes

In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch. ~ Signe Pike

It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived ... And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability - such that we enjoy now - without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history. ~ Ashim Shanker

Marcel Eliade took the position that hallucinogenic shamanism was decadent, and Gordon Wasson, very rightly I believe, contravened this view and held that actually it was very probably the presence of the hallucinogenic drug experience in the life of early man that lay the very basis for the idea of the spirit. ~ Terence McKenna

When God created Man, he gave him Music as a language different from all other languages. And early man sang his glory in the wilderness; and drew the hearts of kings and moved them from their thrones. ~ Khalil Gibran

In the beginning, there was no retirement. There were no old people. In the Stone Age, everyone was fully employed until age 20, by which time nearly everyone was dead, usually of unnatural causes. Any early man who lived long enough to develop crow's-feet was either worshiped or eaten as a sign of respect. ~ Mary-Lou Weisman

Early man recognised these lines of force and marked them out on the landscape with, well, any old thing, really standing stones, ditches, mounds, tumps, sacred wells, and that sort of thing. And, later on, with churches, market crosses, crossroads, and whatnot. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

Jim Thunder, at seventy-five the youngest of the speakers, is a round brown man of serious demeanor who spoke only in Potawatomi. He began solemnly, but as he warmed to his subject his voice lifted like a breeze in the birch trees and his hands began to tell the story. He became more and more animated, rising to his feet, holding us rapt and silent although almost no one understood a single word. He paused as if reaching the climax of his story and looked out at the audience with a twinkle of expectation. One of the grandmothers behind him covered her mouth in a giggle and his stern face suddenly broke into a smile as big and sweet as a cracked watermelon. He bent over laughing and the grandmas dabbed away tears of laughter, holding their sides, while the rest of us looked on in wonderment. When the laughter subsided, he spoke at last in English: "What will happen to a joke if no one will hear it any more? How lonely those words will be, when their is power gone. Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told again. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detective stories always have too many characters anyway. And characters mentioned early on but never sighted, just lingering offstage, take on an awful portentous quality. Better to have them gone. ~ Jonathan Lethem

This man kept us standing and waiting for a good while, while a group of eight to ten Capos gathered round us and looked us up and down… They were on the lookout for a possible lover among the new arrivals. Because I still did not have a full beard, even though nearly twenty-three, so looked younger than my years, and because I had filled out a bit again thanks to the supplementary rations from my Sachsenhausen Capo, I was obviously very much at the center of these Capos' considerations… The situation in which the five of us found ourselves seemed to me very much like a slave-boy market in ancient Rome. ~ Heinz Heger

You wouldn't believe it, but apart from a few drunks, a few sex murderers and other men who get into the papers where they are designated as criminals of passion, no normal man with normal drives has the obvious idea that a normal woman would like to be quite normally raped. Part of it is that men aren't normal, but people are incapable of even imagining all the ramifications of the male disease, so accustomed have they become to men's mistakes in judgment and their phenomenal lack of instinct. ~ Ingeborg Bachmann

No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn't. ~ Criss Jami

I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous. ~ Agatha Christie

One morning when he was about thirteen, Den and I were in the barn doing the before-breakfast chores. I was in the milking stall, Den in the driveway.
He must have been thinking about Maury, for after a while he said, "Dad, Maury Telleen is not very tall. Did you ever notice that?"
"Yes," I said. And probably I was about to tell him he should mind his manners, but he wasn't finished.
He said, "But you never think of him as a little man. Did you ever notice that?"
"Yes," I said. "I have noticed that. ~ Wendell Berry

If every man works at that for which nature fitted him, the cows will be well tended. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

By 1950, he had come to view the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species capable of foretelling things to come - if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, it would be an early indicator that broader freedoms of thought and action were also at risk. ~ Jonathan Eller

Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind's ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free. ~ Neel Burton

For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. ~ Plato

It didn't take long. In that despondent changeless heat the entire human content of the ship congealed into a massive drunkenness. People moved flabbily about like squid in a tank of tepid smelly water. From that moment on we saw, rising to the surface, the terrifying nature of white men, exasperated, freed from constraint, absolutely unbuttoned, their true nature, same as in the war. That tropical steam bath called forth the instincts as August breeds toads and snakes on the fissured walls of prisons. In the European cold, under gray, puritanical northern skies, we seldom get to see our brothers' festering cruelty except in times of carnage, but when roused by the foul fevers of the tropics, their rottenness rises to the surface. That's when the frantic unbuttoning sets in, when filth triumphs and covers us entirely. It's a biological confession. Once work and cold weather cease to constrain us, once they relax their grip, the white man shows you the same spectacle as a beautiful beach when the tide goes out: the truth, fetid pools, crabs, carrion, and turds. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

At length the Turk turned to Larry:
'You write, I believe?' he said with complete lack of interest.
Larry's eyes glittered. Mother, seeing the danger signs, rushed in quickly before he could reply.
'Yes, yes' she smiled, 'he writes away, day after day. Always tapping at the typewriter'
'I always feel that I could write superbly if I tried' remarked the Turk.
'Really?' said Mother. 'Yes, well, it's a gift I suppose, like so many things.'
'He swims well' remarked Margo, 'and he goes out terribly far'
'I have no fear' said the Turk modestly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear'
He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval.
'You see' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man. ~ Gerald Durrell

Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another's company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two ... ~ Plato

We, being the Western world, wouldn't let Russia off the hook on debt. So there were demands on debt servicing in the early days until they ran out of reserves. There was no real aid program, just a fictional aid program. ~ Jeffrey Sachs

I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping," I told him. "But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes," I told the interviewer, "people actually grow up in New York. ~ Gina Greenlee

I'm back there again, broken from being a champion,
The boy that no one loved,
The years I spent training like a method actor to
Become the man that everyone admired,
But it means nothing,
Like ashes on a forehead, they marked me inferior,
When I was still young enough to receive it into the grain of my being ~ Terrence Alonzo Craft

Self-respect, courage, and integrity look good ona man. ~ Robert Glover

We as a people have become so addicted to DYSFUNCTION that we don't recognize PEACE (man or woman) when it enters our energetic space.

We call PEACE soft, too nice, pushover, doormat and other names because PEACE respects you. PEACE cares about & for you. PEACE doesn't want to argue, PEACE speaks it's mind with healthy discussion & at the end of the day, PEACE says I Love you. PEACE keeps their word. PEACE enjoys spending time with you & treating you better than anyone else ever has but because of our addiction, we say this is too good to be true. We wait for the other shoe to drop. We check PEACE phone, follow PEACE home or just dismiss PEACE altogether because something just ain't right!" LEAVE that phone alone, STOP looking for a reason, and CHANGE your mindset. "Once you have begun down this new path, your vibrations will change & PEACE will start to walk with you, YOU will attract his siblings-Love, Joy, Kindness, Happiness & your relationships will become everything you inwardly desired but secretly believed you were not worthy of attaining. ~ Sanjo Jendayi

However, no human being - and certainly no man - has the right to define for me what my understanding of God is. ~ Haleh Afshar, Baroness Afshar

No temptation can gravitate to a man unless there is that is his heart which is capable of responding to it. ~ James Allen

By the time he was finished with that task, finished with that family for once and all, Chase and the others would already have the Ardent in the hands of the Lowes' agent, who'd then bring her and her cargo to the prize courts for a ruling.

A crucial part of that process was the testimony of the ranking officer of the captured vessel. He couldn't stab his fork into Wren's eye - well, he supposed he could. The man only needed his mouth to serve as witness to the courts that the vessel had been fairly won. Did every nicety need to be observed? ~ Alexandra Bracken

Girls, if you will learn to wait patiently and confidently for God to bring a Christlike man into your life, you will not be disappointed. And guys, learn to treat women like the Perfect Gentleman, Jesus Christ If you do, you will not only be promoted out of "jerkhood," but you will then be worthy of a beautiful princess of purity who is saving herself just for you. ~ Eric Ludy

Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing, to pass the brute body and search the life and reason which causes it to exist; - to see that the object is always flowing away, whilst the spirit or necessity which causes it subsists. Its essential mark is that it betrays in every word instant activity of mind, shown in new uses of every fact and image, in preternatural quickness or perception of relations. All its words are poems. It is a presence of mind that gives a miraculous command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling of the moment. The poet squanders on the hour an amount of life that would more than furnish the seventy years of the man that stands next him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't care what a man is. I mean, a great artist is like a great doctor. I don't care how racist he is. If he can show me how to operate on a heart so that I can cure a brother, or cure someone else, I don't give a damn what the man thinks; he has taught me something. And that is valuable to me. And that is valuable to others and man as a whole. ~ Ernest J. Gaines

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands. ~ Alan Bradley

Truth is to be sought with a mind purified from the passions of the body. Having overcome evil things, thou shalt experience the union of the union mortal divinity with the mortal man. ~ Pythagoras

It is a capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his charities. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth. ~ Francis Bacon

How is the black man going to get 'civil rights' before he first wins his human rights? ~ Malcolm X

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There was a curious affinity between man and dog. Both were untamed, both were creatures born and bred to fight, honed and tempered fine by hot winds and long desert stretches, untrusting, dangerous, yet good companions in a hard land. ~ Louis L'Amour

Patriotism is a salt against rottenness, a glorious spur to high endeavour; it recovers the half-obliterated virtue of loyalty, calls every man to service, and ennobles great and small alike. ~ Percy Dearmer

William the Testy. On the contrary, he conceived that the true wisdom of legislation consisted in the multiplicity of laws. He accordingly had great punishments for great crimes, and little punishments for little offences. By degrees the whole surface of society was cut up by ditches and fences, and quickset hedges of the law, and even the sequestered paths of private life so beset by petty rules and ordinances, too numerous to be remembered, that one could scarce walk at large without the risk of letting off a spring-gun or falling into a man-trap. In a little while the blessings of innumerable laws became apparent; a class of men arose to expound and confound them. Petty courts were instituted to take cognizance of petty offences, pettifoggers began to abound, and the community was soon set together by the ears. ~ Washington Irving

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

You can put a man on trial, but you can't make the guilty pay. ~ Shinedown

Jack was already mother-naked when he heard the cry and saw the splash. He slipped from the gunwale into the clear water, made out the vague form at a surprising depth, dived, fished it up, swam to the ship, now a hundred yards away, roared for a line, passed the inanimate Herapath up the side, and followed himself. 'Mr Pullings,'he cried, very angry. 'Put an end to this infernal hallooing instantly. Always the same God-damned foolery, every time a man goes overboard. Damn you all for a mob of mad lunatics. Get along forward. Silence fore and aft. ~ Patrick O'Brian

A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man ... A man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man. ~ Thomas Carlyle

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its ~ Leo Tolstoy

A man fell in love with Jeanne, and she tried to love him. But she complained that he uttered such ordinary words, that he could never say the magic phrase which would open her being. ~ Anais Nin

You got a tattoo?" It's the third time I've asked Holder the same question, but I just don't believe it. It's out of character for him. Especially since I'm not the one who encouraged it. "Jesus, Daniel," he groans on the other end of the line. "Stop. And stop asking me why." "It's just a weird thing to tattoo on yourself. Hopeless. It's a very depressing term. But still, I'm impressed." "I gotta go. I'll call you later this week." I sigh into the phone. "God, this sucks, man. The only good thing about this entire school since you moved is fifth period. ~ Colleen Hoover

Most High, all powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honor,
and all blessing.

To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praise be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon
and the stars, in heaven you formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which
You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord,
through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

Praised b ~ Francis Of Assisi

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld