Camille Flammarion

“ Whether the exchange of electricity is produced on a vast stretch between two rows of clouds, or whether it is manifested by a long thin spark launched like an arrow and veiled by the curtain of clouds, all that can be seen is a strange light, vague, diaphanous, instantaneous, which sometimes spreads itself like a sheet of fire all over the horizon.
It is diffused lightning which gives us the finest storm effects on those heavy summer evenings when the air is breathless and saturated with electricity. ”

“ If we are immortal, what do we do with ourselves through endless eternity? Where shall I be a hundred years from now? Where will all the present dwellers of the earth be? To die, for ever and ever; to have existed but for a moment! What a mockery! Would it not be better a hundred times over never to have been born? But if it be our fate to live eternally and never to be able to change anything of the fatality that carries us along,—having endless eternity always before us,—how can we bear the burden of such a destiny? ”

“ It is the Sun that sparkles in the foam of the merry wine; that charms our gaze in those first days of spring, when the home of the human race is adorned with all the charms of verdant and flowering youth. Everywhere we find the Sun; everywhere we recognize his work, extending from the infinitely great to the infinitely little. We bow to his might, and admire his power. When in the sad winter day he disappears behind the snowy eaves, we think his fiery globe will never rise to mitigate the short December days which are alleviated with his languid beams. ”

“ Great things are going to happen around you. After the storm I shall perhaps return for one last visit to give you proof of my existence, and to show that I have not forgotten you. Then, later, when your life upon this little planet is done, I shall come to you once more, and together we will take our real journey through the unspeakable splendours of speed. Nor can you ever, in your wildest dreams, form even a faint idea of the stupendous surprises, the inconceivable wonders which there await you. ”

“ Our longing gaze followed it behind the dark clouds in the horizon, whose edges it tipped with a glorious purple. Its last rays shone on us, and then came a bluish-grey twilight. Suddenly we are enveloped in a dense fog. We look around, above us. Everything has disappeared in the mist. The balloon itself is no longer visible. We can see nothing except the ropes which suspend us, and these are only visible for a few feet above our heads, when they lose themselves in the fog. We are alone with our wickerwork house in an unfathomable vault. ”

“ Thus recently on our own Earth shone the life of Babylon, of Thebes, of Memphis, of Nineveh, of Carthage, the glory of Semiramis, Sesostris, Solomon, Alexander, Cambyses, and Cæsar; and to-day the silence of funeral solitude reigns supreme over the ruins of the palaces and temples, in the slumber of the invading night. In the history of the universe it is not only peoples, kingdoms, and empires which have disappeared, but it is whole worlds, groups of worlds, archipelagoes of planets, visible universes! ”

“ THE EFFECTS OF LIGHTNING ON MANKIND
The destructive work of lightning in every form is immense. A formidable and invisible world skirts the earth—an enchanted world, more wonderful than any Eastern legend—an unknown ocean, whose immaterial presence is constantly brought before us by the most fearful electric conflagrations.
Even to-day the brilliancy of lightning hides itself from us in the darkness of impenetrable mystery. But we feel that there is an immeasurable power, an unimaginable force which rules us. ”

“ We described the Earth as an orb in the Heavens, similar to all the other planets of the great solar family. We see these sister planets of our world circulating under the starry vault, like luminous points whose brilliancy is sometimes dazzling. For us they are marvelous celestial birds hovering in the ether, upheld by invisible wings. The Earth is just the same. It is supported by nothing. Like the soap-bubble that assumes a lovely iridescence in the rays of the Sun, or, better, like the balloon rapidly cleaving the air, it is isolated from every kind of support. ”

“ Death seemed to her a cruel injustice. She never thought of her mother lying on her death-bed in the ripe beauty of her thirtieth year,—taken away to the green and fragrant cemetery, filled with the songs of birds, while the roses were in full bloom; crossed off the book of life while all Nature still sang, still bloomed and shone,—she never thought of her mother's pale face, as I said, without a sudden shudder creeping all over her from head to foot. No, her mother was not dead! She would not die at thirty, or at any time! And he? He die! ”

“ It is a reality, eternal and sacred, holding its fixed place in the universal plan of creation. The light of every star, direct or reflected—say otherwise, the aspect of each Sun, and of each planet—is diffused in space, according to a rate of rapidity already known to you, and the luminous ray contains in itself all that is visible. As nothing can be lost, the history of each world is contained in the light which incessantly emanates from it in successive waves, eternally travelling into infinite space without any possibility of its being annihilated. ”

“ The human mind cannot comprehend the infinite, eternal, immutable spirit, the organising power of that All of which the Earth and Man are but particles as imperfect as they are mediocre. This Infinite is to the infantile deity imagined by man as the midday sun is to the muddy obscurity of a mole-burrow under the roots of meadow grass. His existence is proved by the universal organisation. Everything is organised, from the humblest leaf to the world system. ”

“ Evening Star declines slowly in its turn toward the western horizon. Our gaze is held by a shining world that dominates the whole of the occidental heavens. This is the "Shepherd's Star," Venus of rays translucent.
Little by little, one by one, the more brilliant stars shine out. Here are the white Vega of the Lyre, the burning Arcturus, the seven stars of the Great Bear, a whole sidereal population catching fire, like innumerable eyes that open on the Infinite. It is a new life that is revealed to our imagination, inviting us to soar into these mysterious regions. ”

“ The greater number of souls never even suspect their own existence. Out of the fourteen hundred millions of human beings who people the earth, ninety-nine one hundredths do not think. Great heavens! what would they do with immortality? As the molecule of iron floats in the blood, throbbing in Lamartine's or Hugo's temple, or is fixed for a time in Cæsar's sword; as the molecule of hydrogen shines in the lobby of a theatre, or merges itself into the drop of water swallowed by a fish in the dusky depths of the sea, so living atoms sleep which have never thought. ”

“ At a given moment I spring from the ground by a vigorous leap, and, spreading out my arms, sail in the air without fatigue. At other times, descending a steep mountain on foot, I spring out into space, with feet pressed together, and float at will, with a slow and oblique motion, to any point I wish, standing upright as soon as my feet touch the ground.
Dreams bring reminiscences of a former existence. ”

“ The silent lightning which flashes in the sky is only the reflection of a distant storm. Whether on account of the spherical shape of the earth or on account of the irregularities of the land, the clouds are invisible, but the effluvium which escapes from them can be seen at a great distance.
These poetic and ephemeral flames which glide through the sky, appeal to the imagination of the dreamer, and yet they are quite as terrible as the flashes which are accompanied by thunder. ”