Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Sartor Resartus, Book 2, ch. 7 (1834)
(Source)
Quoting Herr Teufelsdröckh.
This chapter first appeared in Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, Vol. 9, No. 51 (1834-03).
Quotations about:
mechanism
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If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Speech (1998-09), “Is There an Artificial God?”, Digital Biota 2 conference, Cambridge, UK
(Source)
Discussing the historical mysteriousness of "life" and why it was (and is) difficult to understand.
Collected in The Salmon of Doubt, Part 2 "The Universe" (2002) [ed. Peter Guzzardi]. This (and other) sections of this extemporaneous speech were also quoted in Richard Dawkins, "Eulogy for Douglas Adams," Church of Saint Martin in the Fields, London (2001-09-17).
Variant: "If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, you end up with a non-working cat. Do not try this."
