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“Geometry is 'number in space', music is 'number in time'.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“In a seven-tone scale the eighth note is the octave, twice the pitch of the first note, and so signals the movement to a new level. This may be why, in religious symbolism, the eighth step is often associated with spiritual evolution or salvation.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Islamic patterns speak of infinity and the omnipresent center.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Ludwig Schlafi (1814-1895) proved that there are six regular four-dimensional polytopes (generalisations of polyhedra): the 5-cell made of tetrahedra, the 8-cell or tesseract made of cubes, the 16-cell made of tetrahedra, the 24-cell made of octahedra, the 120-cell made of dodecahedra, and the 600-cell made of tetrahedra.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Many familiar objects from cassettes to credit cards and Georgian front doors are Phi (1.618...) rectangles.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“When one circle is drawn over another like this so that they pass through each others' centers, then an important almond shape, the vesica piscis, literally 'fish's bladder' is formed. It is one of the first things that circles can do. Christ is often depicted inside a vesica.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“The dodecagon is also made from six squares and six equilateral triangles fitted around a hexagon”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Twelve is the number which fits around one in three dimensions in the same way that six fits around one in two dimensions. The New Testament is a story of a teacher surrounded by twelve disciples.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Ten is formed from two pentagons and ten life-invoking pentagons sit perfectly arpund a decagon, and DNA, appropriately as the key to the reproduction of life, has ten steps for each turn of its double helix, so appears in cross-section as a tenfold rosette.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Eleven is important as the first number that allows us to begin to comprehend the measure of a circle. This is because, for practical purposes, a circle measuring seven across will measure eleven halfway around.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Venus draws a fivefold pattern around Earth every eight years allowing us to draw an amazing diagram. In those eight years there are almost exactly 99 full moons, nine elevens, the number of names or reflections of Allah in Islam. Jupiter draws a beautiful elevenfold pattern around Earth.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“The ancient Maya were superb stargazers. Their calendar synchronized not just the Sun and Moon, byt also Venus and Mars. They worked out that 81 (or 3X3X3X3) full moons occur exactly every 2,392 (or 8X13X23) days, an astonishingly accurate gearing.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“The ancients were obsessed with measures, and the number eleven is central in their metrological scheme. Shown opposite is the extraordinary fact that the size of the Moon relates to the size of the Earth as does three to eleven. What this means is that if we draw down the Moon to the Earth, as shown, then a heavenly circle through the moon will have a circumference equal to the perimeter of a square around the Earth. This is called 'squaring the circle'. Quite how the old druids worked this out we may never know, but they clearly did, for the Moon and the Earth are best measured in miles, as shown. A double rainbow also magically squares the circle.”
― quote from Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
“Being in the present moment, one can step outside the mechanical train of life, and this is where the inner revolution begins.”
― Belsebuub, quote from Gazing into the Eternal: Reflections upon a Deeper Purpose to Living
“He doesn't love me no matter what he believes. He loves that I need him. But I don't. Not really. Because despite what I thought, what I counted on, he has never been there for me. There is no safety with him. I've always been alone. I just didn't know how isolated I was until now.”
― Joelle Charbonneau, quote from Need
“The Tender Place
Your temples , where the hair crowded in ,
Were the tender place. Once to check
I dropped a file across the electrodes
of a twelve-volt battery -- it exploded
Like a grenade. Somebody wired you up.
Somebody pushed the lever. They crashed
The thunderbolt into your skull.
In their bleached coats, with blenched faces,
They hovered again
To see how you were, in your straps.
Whether your teeth were still whole .
The hand on the calibrated lever
Again feeling nothing
Except feeling nothing pushed to feel
Some squirm of sensation . Terror
Was the cloud of you
Waiting for these lightnings. I saw
An oak limb sheared at a bang.
You your Daddy's leg . How many seizures
Did you suffer this god to grab you
By the roots of the hair? The reports
Escaped back into clouds. What went up
Vaporized? Where lightning rods wept copper
And the nerve· threw off its skin
Like a burning child
Scampering out of the bomb-flash. They dropped you
A rigid bent bit of wire
Across the Boston City grid. The lights
In the Senate House dipped
As your voice dived inwards
Right through the bolt-hole basement.
Came up, years later,
Over-exposed, like an X-ray --
Brain-map still dark-patched
With the scorched-earth scars
Of your retreat . And your words ,
Faces reversed from the light ,
Holding in their entrails.”
― Ted Hughes, quote from Birthday Letters
“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Moby-Dick
“Sometimes, the truth comes out slow.”
― Matthew Desmond, quote from Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
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