Outer world

“ What holds of spatial localization, holds of a number of other essential characters of the things of the external world. The internal world is essentially a world of experiences that may or may not be definite, but that at least need not be definable. The outer world, in so far as it is verifiably outer, is essentially the world whose presence can only be indicated to you by your definable, communicable experiences. ”

“ Again, with many the outer life is but little; the passing scene, the din of the battle which humanity is ever waging, the one scarce is gazed upon or the other heard by those who retire much from the outward world, and live almost exclusively upon their own thoughts, and in an ideal realm of fancy, or a real one of internal conflict, which is hidden from the outer vision. ”

“ OVER on the other side of the ocean, on the Continent of Europe, where a man's life counts for less than that of an insect, it seemed for just one short moment as though the veil of the future was torn away, and a vision of the future showed suddenly itself to me, like the view of a distant valley from a mountain top when there is a rift in the surrounding clouds. ”

“ If you are a wanderer from the stars, you are not like that other one we have down yonder," and he pointed to the southward.
"What!" I asked, pricking my ears in amazement, "another wanderer from the outside world! Does he come from the earth?"—using the word An had given me to signify my own planet. ”

“ I have no eloquence, ladies and gentlemen, to express the vision of man's material destiny that opens out before me. I see the desert continents transformed, the poles no longer wildernesses of ice, the whole world once more Eden. I see the power of man reach out among the stars. ”

“ They called it, naturally enough, The Sun—just as home was Earth, Terra, or simply The World. And naturally enough, being the ascendant animal on Earth, they called themselves human beings. They were looking for extraterrestrial souls to save. ”

“ Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world. ”

“ When will they be inspired by the magnificent scenery of our own world, imbibe the fresh enthusiasm of a new heaven and a new earth, and soar upon the expanded wings of truth and liberty? Is not nature as original—her truths as captivating—her aspects as various, as lovely, as grand—her Promethean fire as glowing in this, our Western hemisphere, as in that of the East? ”

“ Could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown, and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made before him—perceive you not that what was before the wilderness, would become the land of invitation, and that now the world would be the wilderness? What unpeopled space could not do, can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes, and beatific society. ”

“ Shall Men for whom our Age
Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared,
To explore the world without and world within,
Be joyless as the blind? Ambitious Souls—
Whom Earth, at this late season, hath produced
To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh
The planets in the hollow of their hand ”

“ Normalcy and sanity, cities and machines and half-forgotten values, coming nearer and nearer over the tossing sea, beneath the brassy sky, from the real world of men that lay somewhere beyond the horizon . ”

“ Let those whose time, resources and means allow, travel throughout the length and breadth of that vast continent, let them scatter to the most distant regions of the earth and, fired with enthusiasm and detachment, hand on the torch of God’s undying flame to the waiting multitudes of a sadly-stricken world. ”

“ In ascending to this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect. ”

“ We will next trouble the reader to let the eye wander off to the dim distance, where the new world looms majestically up, and stands out boldly against the setting sun, previously alluded to, which illuminates the scene with golden splendor, and bathes the new born continent in a flood of dazzling light. ”

“ I have got used to them; and the most formidable of all, the biggest bug of Metaphysics, the Problem which nonplusses the wisest heads on this Planet, has become quite a familiar companion of mine. What is Reality? I ask myself almost daily: how does the External World exist, materialised in mid-air, apart from my perceptions? ”

“ It is by the simplest poetic adaptation of the Sun’s daily life, typifying Man’s life in dawning beauty, in mid-day glory, in evening death, that mythic fancy even fixed the belief in the religions of the world, that the Land of Departed Souls lies in the Far West or the World Below. ”

“ Those in the beyond were still linked to those on earth; all together made one undivided life, neither in the visible world alone nor in the hidden world alone, but in both; each according to their destinies and duties. ”

“ Is it very hard to believe, then, that in that yearning towards the miracle of a sun quenched in sea distance, felt and felt again in human hearts through countless generations, the westward stream of human activity on this planet had its rise? Is it unreasonable to picture, on an earth spinning eastward, a treadmill rush of feet to follow the sinking light? ”

“ We must forget all this formal modern life; we must break away from this cramped, cold, northern world; we must find ourselves face to face at last, in Pacific isles or African forests, with the underlying truths of simple naked nature. ”

“ Outside, in what was called the big world, things were going on with frantic hurry and change, but in here the leisured calm was huge, gigantic, so much so that the other dwindled into a kind of lost remoteness. ”

“ If we could realise that round world beyond, then indeed we should go circumspectly.... If the world were like a whispering gallery, what whispers might we not hear now—from India, from Africa, from Germany, warnings from the past, intimations of the future.... ”

“ Every thing which takes flight from the earth has a strange intelligence, which guides it to its own country in the moon. I had landed on the English domain, and now walked along in expectation of meeting with some of the lost advantages of my own world. My chief motive for this journey had been curiosity, accompanied perhaps by that desire which makes so many travellers,—the desire of having been where others have not. ”

“ The external evolution of form is complete for this hour; men go down into the bowels of the earth, they sail the seas, they mount the air on wings, and the external world has seen "the son of man coming in clouds of glory" and now the eternal man must have his hour, and come in "trailing robes of power and brightness," to pour new revelation through the external world and its laws. ”

“ The dark continent of motive and desire has never been explored. In the brain, that wondrous world with one inhabitant, there are recesses dim and dark, treacherous sands and dangerous shores, where seeming sirens tempt and fade ”

“ How deeply the myth of the Sunset has entered into the doctrine of men concerning a Future State, how the West and the Under-World have become by mere imaginative analogy Regions of the Dead, how the quaint day-dreams of savage poets may pass into 49honoured dogmas of classic sages and modern divines,—all this the crowd of details here cited from the wide range of culture stand to prove. ”

“ By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of light, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath. ”

“ Above all things you will reflect, why you undertake the labour of travelling—certainly not to see new mountains, new plains, forests, rivers, or seas, or men, or beasts, for you can see such things at home. In this sense it has been rightly said by a certain writer: "Whosoever hath seen one man, one ox, one mountain, one forest, one city, &c. has seen the world, for the world is composed of such;" ”

“ For my own part, I have been conscious from my earliest youth of the existence of this desire to explore distant regions, to trace the varieties exhibited by mankind under the different influences of different climates, customs, and laws, and to investigate with unwearied solicitude the moral and physical distinctions that separate and diversify the various nations of the earth. ”

“ With the knowledge and material at hand, and the atmosphere craft waiting at the sealed exit, you can contact what survivors' descendants you may find in hidden corners of the world and lead them to the peaceful glory of Earth's future.
"Obviously, life will not visit back and forth between the stars, or even the planets. ”

“ The beautiful aspect of the outward world, and the delight which it inspires, are no doubt proofs of a goodness somewhere which supports these, just as food and air are proofs of it. But they are more: they have a mystic meaning, they are hints and intimations of something more than eye, or ear, or mere intellect discover. ”

“ I am like a being thrown from another planet on this terrestrial ball, an alien, a pilgrim among its possessors; I have no share in their pursuits; and life is to me a pathless, a waste and howling, wilderness,—surface barrenness, its verge enveloped under dark-brown shade. ”

“ Love of the Earth, life close to Nature, and denial of so-called civilization was the first step upwards. In the Simple Life, in this return to Nature, lay the opening of the little path that climbed to the stars and heaven. ”

“ The sky and the clouds now seemed bigger and mightier than the small country and the small people; the sky now seemed to be the universe; and houses, roads, trees and people, horizons of woods and moors, lastly, human souls all seemed to shrink under the great woes that drowned the small country and the small people from horizon to horizon. ”

“ We, in this dark and depressed world, know but little of the world of light and exaltation, and, conversing within narrow confines, can scarcely admit any tolerable conceptions of the vast regions above. ”

“ In these rare spots, that are always in the remote country, untouched by the advantages of civilization, one is conscious of an enwrapping web or mist of spirit, the glamorous and wistful wraith of all the vanished shapes which once dwelt there in such close comradeship. ”

“ If at one moment life stood before his mental gaze, an illuminated little speck or disc, softly rounded with mysterious sleep, the next moment this mere span shot out into an illimitable plain, whereon he himself stood—a plain covered with forests, parted by seas, studded with cities and huge concourses of men, mapped out into civilizations, over-canopied by stars. ”

“ At every hour of the day the glorious orb is at once rising, resplendent as noonday, and setting in the west; or rather our senses deceive us, and there is, properly speaking, no east or west, no north or south, in the world.
3. In all natural and spiritual transactions, so far as they come within the sphere of human agency, there are three distinct elements: there is an element of endeavor, of mystery, and of result; in other words, there is something for man to do, there is something beyond his knowledge and control, there is something achieved by the co-operation of these two. ”

“ All the world will know something of the pleasures and freedom of travel, of wandering and the enjoyment of unfamiliar atmospheres, of mountains and deserts and remote cities and deep forests, and the customs of alien peoples. ”

“ The beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roaring for ever in our ears,—all these things led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to be familiar with the unreal. ”

“ For, like many other men, he had something of the explorer's spirit about him—something that responded eagerly to the charm of the strange, the vague, the new,—something that makes the would-be explorer of the terra incognita ignore all thought of danger, and dream only of the beauty of virgin forests, strange flowers, and fabled fountains of youth and love eternal! ”

“ The world there was the flat world of the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that reached to sunset; between, the conquests of peace, dearer bought than those of war. ”

“ For a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky ”

“ But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. ”

“ Came a rushing, passionate desire to escape from cities and live for beauty and simplicity 'in the wilderness'; to taste the life he seemed to know; to go out blindly with him into woods and desolate places, and be mixed and blended with the loveliness of Earth and Nature. This was the first thing I knew. It was like an expansion of my normal world—almost an extension of consciousness. ”

“ For him, among the ancient watch-towers of the earth, the innumerable interests and activities of swarming cities, the restless tides and currents of an eager civilization, take on the remoteness of a dream. ”

“ The result of centuries of isolation is evident in a profound contrast of “atmosphere.” It seems almost as if we stood for a space upon the dim shores of another planet, spectators of the doings of a race of whose modes of thought and feeling we were entirely ignorant. ”