The Ardent Swarm

“What you lose in strength, you gain in clear-sightedness. The trick is to reach the age of wisdom while you’re still strong enough to do things.”

‘God blesses the man of good deeds, and men bless the man of many sheep!’

Once again, man, in search of land, gave the plague to his fellow man in the folds of his offerings.

She felt like they were worshipping a God of hate and punishment, while hers was one of love and mercy.

Yesterday we feared amnesia and abandonment; today we dread fire and destruction.

Now they’re telling us how to talk and dress, but soon they’ll tell us how to think. What will be on the agenda for tomorrow?

Dust covered many of its shelves, and often a visitor in search of information would feel like they were excavating a tomb. Despite this fossilized atmosphere and need for renovations, Sidi saw books glinting in the library aisles and felt as if he were beneath the vault of a starry sky, built of words, atop columns of ink and paper. Here was the divinity of man; here was his true temple.

“Like our bees that have to coexist with the giant hornets, we are a people who must coexist with the flaws in the earth—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions—and with war, the flaw of human nature. We know that our archipelago is fragile, that our existence is fragile, and that the survivors must always rebuild. We are a people well versed in catastrophes, Professor. The ‘other’ is none other than ourselves, a survivor and a partner.