Derek

“These great monoliths were quarried in Upper Egypt, were floated in barges down the Nile, were towed across the Mediterranean to Byblos or Tripolis and thence were hauled, by oxen, mules and men, uphill to Homs, and from Homs southward to Baalbek, or east, across the desert, to Palmyra.
What a labour of giants! And, from the utilitarian point of view, how marvellously pointless!”
― Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell

“In this fashion, knowledge begets questions which beget new technology which provides answers--which in turn beget questions. This is the implacable carousel of research.”
― Richard Fortey, Earth: An Intimate History

“What he failed to recall was that the deeds of reality are just as inane and childish, and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key

“Since therefore I see that the chiefest members and parts of the world are destroyed and begotten anew, I may be sure that for heaven and earth as well there has been a time of beginning and there will be a time of destruction.”
― Lucretius