Author: Jim Holt

Cites

• Alfred Tennyson (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: And this grey spirit, yearning in desire / To follow knowledge like a sinking star / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
    FROM: "Ulysses", (1922), Poem, UK
• Queen Victoria (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: I would earnestly warn you against trying to find out tht reason for and explanation of everything... To try and find out the reason for everything is very dangerous and leads to nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction, unsettling your mind and in the end making you miserable.
    FROM: Letter to granddaughter Princess Victoria of Hesse, (1883), Letter, UK
• James Joyce (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: ...well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I...
    FROM: Ulysses, (1922), Novel, Ireland
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: The riddle does not exist.
    FROM: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, (1922), Book, Austria / UK
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: Harley told his Mother, that he was thinking all day -- all the morning, all the day, all the evening -- "what it would be, if there were Nothing! if all the men, & women, & Trees, & grass, and birds & beasts, & the Sky, & the Ground, were all gone: Darkness & Coldness -- & nothing to be dark & cold.
    FROM: Letter to Sara Hutchinson, (1802), Letter, UK
• John Wilmot (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: NOTHING! thou elder brother even to shade / That hadst a being ere the world was made, / And (well fixed) are alone of ending not afraid.
    FROM: "Upon Nothing", (1678), Poem, UK
• Archilochus Jones (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: Nothing, / said Heidegger, / the modernist / eminence, / noths.
    FROM: "Metaphysics Explained For You", (None), NULL, Greece
• Allan Sandage (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: Science cannot answer the deepest questions. As soon as you ask why there is something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science.
    FROM: An interview with Alan Lightman, (1989), Interview, US
• Alexander Pope (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: See Mystery to Mathematics fly! / In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
    FROM: The Dunciad, (1743), Poem, UK
• Derek Parfit (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing.
    FROM: Why anything? Why this?, (1998), Article, UK
• Descartes (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: I am, however, a real thing and really exist. But what thing? I have answered: a thing that thinks.
    FROM: Meditations, (1641), Book, France
• Arthur Schopenhauer (1)
  • IN: Why Does the World Exist? (2012) Non-Fiction, Cosmology, American
    EPIGRAPH: A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands of years of non-existence; he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that is cannot be true.
    FROM: "The Vanity of Existence", (1913), Book, Germany