“I am half-sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from The Lady of Shalott
“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from The Lady of Shalott
“The mirror crack'd from side to side
"The curse has come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from The Lady of Shalott
“And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from The Lady of Shalott
Alfred Tennyson
Born place: in Somersby, Lincolnshire, The United Kingdom
Born date August 6, 1809
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“The more wants a man has, the less freedom.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Dear and Glorious Physician
“كان في تابوت معدًا للدفن، ورغمًا عن ذلك كان يعلم أنه ليس ميتًا وأنه إذا حاول النهوض فسيكون بوسعه القيام بذلك في يسر على الأقل روحيًا، لكن الأمر لم يكن جديرًا بهذا العناء.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Innocent Erendira and Other Stories
“I'd rather lose her from my life, but know she was alive and well than lose her altogether to death.”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from Vampires are Forever
“What the hell were you doing at the Hurrah? You won't find a date there, none of them are into chicks.”
― Kylie Chan, quote from White Tiger
“Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [ ¤ SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546]. Space Colonization Subgroup. Open discussion board.
Okay, so imagine we get past the next few rough decades and finally do what we should have back in TwenCen. Say we mine asteroids for platinum, discover the secrets of true nanotechnology, and set Von Neumann "sheep" grazing on the moon to produce boundless wealth. To listen to some of the rest of you, all our problems would then be over. The next step, star travel, and colonization of the galaxy, would be trivial.
But hold on! Even assuming we solve how to maintain long-lasting ecologies in space and get so wealthy the costs of star-flight aren't crippling, you've still got the problem of time.
I mean, most hypothetical designs show likely starships creeping along at no more than ten percent of the speed of light, a whole lot slower than those sci-fi cruisers we see zipping on three-vee. At such speeds it may take five, ten generations to reach a good colony site. Meanwhile, passengers will have to maintain villages and farms and cranky, claustrophobic grandkids, all inside their hollowed-out, spinning worldlets.
What kind of social engineering will that take? Do you know how to design a closed society that'd last so long without flying apart? Oh, I think it can be done. But don't pretend it'll be simple!
Nor will be solving the dilemma of gene pool isolation. In the arks and zoos right now, a lot of rescued species are dying off even though the microecologies are right, simply because too few individuals were included in the original mix. For a healthy gene pool you need diversity, variety, heterozygosity.
One thing's clear, no starship will make it carrying only one racial group. What'll be needed, frankly, are mongrels… people who've bred back and forth with just about everybody and seem to enjoy it.”
― David Brin, quote from Earth
Murder Is Easy
Twice as Hot
Wolf Island
How to Stop Worrying...
Prince of Thieves
The Shadow and the S...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
