12-02-2012, 10:17 AM
Mine's a typically long and pretentious one, from my favourite writer and novel. I suppose it's more of a passage than a quote, but nonetheless:
"He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising through the centuries, and he knew that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is never broken except to shout the truth. He felt it building from the blood of Abel to his own, rising and engulfing him. It seemed in one instant to lift and turn him. He whirled toward the treeline. There, rising and spreading in the night, a red-gold tree of fire ascended as if it would consume the darkness in one tremendous burst of flame… He threw himself to the ground and with his face against the dirt of the grave, he heard the command, Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy." - Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away
If that's not appropriate this might do: "When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
"He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising through the centuries, and he knew that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is never broken except to shout the truth. He felt it building from the blood of Abel to his own, rising and engulfing him. It seemed in one instant to lift and turn him. He whirled toward the treeline. There, rising and spreading in the night, a red-gold tree of fire ascended as if it would consume the darkness in one tremendous burst of flame… He threw himself to the ground and with his face against the dirt of the grave, he heard the command, Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy." - Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away
If that's not appropriate this might do: "When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe