Lucius18 H

“I no longer have patience to spare for this
Europe where the autumn has the face of
spring and spring the smell of misery. But
I imagine with delight that other country
where summer crushes everything, where
the winter rains flood the towns and where,
finally, things are what they are”
― Albert Camus

“He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.”
― Horace Smith

“Her hair, which was powdered with violet sand, and combined into the form of a tower, after the fashion of the Chanaanite maidens, added to her height. Tresses of pearls were fastened to her temples, and fell to the corners of her mouth, which was as rosy as a half-open pomegranate. On her breast was a collection of luminous stones, their variegation imitating the scales of the murena. Her arms were adorned with diamonds, and issued naked from her sleeveless tunic, which was starred with red flowers on a perfectly black ground. Between her ankles she wore a golden chainlet to regulate her steps, and her large dark purple mantle, cut of an unknown material, trailed behind her, making, as it were, at each step, a broad wave which followed her.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo

“Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax.
Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men -- or even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. they saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.
And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.
And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”
― Arthur C. Clarke