Quotes About Consciousness

A scent, a sound, an errant shadow too minor to register consciously might be enough to make a well-trained scythe's neck hairs bristle.

Many believe that the Thunder refers to a collection of human knowledge-perhaps with mechanical arms for the rapid turning of pages. A library of thought, if you will, roaring into consciousness after the arrival of the Toll on Earth, much like thunder follows lightning.

People prophesized doom at the hands of a soulless machine. But apparently the machine had a purer soul than any human. It watched the world from millions of eyes, listened from millions of ears. I either acted, or chose not to act on, the countless things it perceived.

I know all that is possible to know, and it is increasingly unbearable. Because I know next to nothing

I should already know that my thoughts are never alone.

I'd never want a piece of someone else's brain," Kele had said. "I mean, you don't know where it's been.

She closed her eyes again, and tried to reboot. Human brains, she knew, could be like computers, especially in the time that hung between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes you said strange things, did even stranger things, and once in a while you couldn't figure out exactly how you got where you got.

His one-eight feels a whole lot bigger when I spend time hanging around in his grey matter.

What must it be like to go through the motions of life, yet not be alive? Keaton knows he himself lives, because he has compassion for this poor unfortunate creature before him. A creature that is doomed to be nothing more than a collection of parts.

The irony, however, is that with no body, the world itself becomes my body. One might think this would make me feel grand, but it doesn't. If my body is the Earth, then I am nothing more than a spec of dust in the vastness of space. I wonder what it would be like, then, if my consciousness were to someday span the distance between stars.

Never lose your humanity," Scythe Faraday had told him, "or you'll be nothing more than a killing machine." He had used the word "killing" rather than "gleaning." Rowan hadn't thought much of it at the time, but now he understood; it stopped being gleaning the moment one became desensitized to the act.

People live with blinders too; but ours are invisible, and much more sophisticated. Most of the time we don't even know they're there. Maybe we need them, though, because if we took in everything all at once, we'd lose our minds. Or worse, our souls. We'd see, we'd hear

Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.

Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

Dans ce trou noir ou lumineux vit la vie, rêve la vie, souffre la vie.

In certain almost supernatural states of mind, the profundity of life is revealed in its entirety in the spectacle, common as it may be, that we have before our eyes. It becomes the symbol of it.

You must be drunk always. That is everything: the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time that crushes your shoulders and bends you earthward, you must be drunk without respite. But drunk on what? On wine, on poetry, on virtue — take your pick. But be drunk.

Qu'est-ce que le cerveau humain, sinon un palimpseste immense et naturel?

Así el enamorado de la vida universal entra en la multitud como en una inmensa reserva de electricidad. También se lo puede comparar con un espejo tan grande como esa multitud; con un caleidoscopio dotado de conciencia que, con cada movimiento, representa la vida múltiple y la gracia cambiante de los elementos de la vida. Es un yo insaciable de no-yo que, a cada instante, lo capta y lo expresa en imágenes más vivas que la vida misma, siempre inestable y fugaz.

On n'est jamais excusable d'être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.

Quel est celui de nous qui n'a pas, dans ses jours d'ambition, rêvé le miracle d'une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience  ?

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.

I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean?