Quotes About Descent

It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.

You took me riding in your rocket gave me a star But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back Down to this cold, cold world

He experienced a feeling of descent, which became more rapid as time passed, but the fall might also have occurred for an eternity.

The ceiling sloped downwards gradually as if teasing him. He kept taking long, measured lungsful of air, sure that every one would be his last, only to find there was time to take another. Then the stone kissed the water, and he had no chance but to descend, feeling blindly with his hands, kicking with his feet.

You will fall with me as a stone in the grave

it to the bottom. It clattered and rattled all the way down

Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing.

It's physics. Pure physics, I'm falling fast and faster still. So fall with me. Fall down with me. And stay.

A man does not always remain at the same stage. He is always ascending or descending. When he reaches the top, he must concern himself with the probability that he will fall. When he reaches the bottom, he must strive once again to climb to the top. That is the nature of man. When the soul of a man is in its darkest night, he must strive constantly for new light. When one thinks there is only an end, that is when one must struggle for the new beginning.

I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol

All my talent, if that's what you'd call it, goes only one way these days. Into the worst kind of darkness.

Facilis descensus Averno," he quoted from Virgil's Aeneid. Ryan found himself answering, by rote, The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.

One of the most profound truths that Mahayana Buddhism teaches is that nirvana is samsara (the troubled world). [...] The same truth is expressed most beautifully in the Christian image of the Incarnation: God descends to reascend. There can be no ascension without descent. We must realize that Zen and Christianity are not telling two different stories but one story.

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need to risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.

But as I descended the rocky path madness seized me and I cried aloud in the night; and as I bent over the silent waters with silver fingers, I saw that my countenance had deserted me. And the white voice spoke to me: Kill yourself! Sighing there arose in me a young boy's shadow and gazed at me radiantly from crystalline eyes, that I sank down weeping beneath the trees, the mighty canopy of stars.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

But very few ordeals are redemptive and I doubt if the descent into hell teaches anything new. It can only hasten processes which are already in existence, and usually this just means that it degrades. You see, in hell one lacks the energy for any good change. This indeed is the meaning of hell.

It is the long still moment of dreamy suspended passion before the spinning clutching descent.

The pit of melancholy was a bottomless one, and he was descending fast, falling further away from the good times. Such times often seemed tantalisingly within reach; he could see them, going on all around him. His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more.

In the joy of the faces around him, Stevie gained a measurement of his own misery. The pit of melancholy was a bottomless one, and he was descending fast, falling further away from the good times. Such times often seemed tantalisingly within reach; he could see them, going on all around him. His mind was like a cruel prison, giving his captive soul a sight of freedom, but no more.

From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born?

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

A wide ladder with rubber treads on the steps allows for a swift, easy descent into the bowels of the city.