Langdon always ended this lecture with a reminder that Arab culture had also given mankind the word al-kuhl – the favorite beverage of Harvard freshmen – known as alcohol.
A noble quest, Kirsch thought, despite seeing it as an empty exercise – a meaningless search for random points of correspondence among a hodgepodge of ancient fictions, fables, and myths.
The human spirit craves for mastery over its carnal shell.
The term ‘atheist,’ ” Kirsch continued, “should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘nonastrologer’ or a ‘nonalchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive, or for people who doubt that aliens traverse the galaxy only to molest cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
Faukman stared at the receiver and shook his head. Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.
Your victory has been inevitable. Never before has it been as obvious as it is at this moment. Science is the new God.” What.
The Apocalypse is not the end of the world, but rather it is the end of the world as we know it.
Langdon decided not to say another word all evening. Sophie Neveu was clearly a hell of a lot smarter than he was.
I reject monogamy as an affront to evolution.
Entropy is just a fancy way of saying: things fall apart.
New World Order,” Langdon repeated, “based on scientific enlightenment. They called it their Luciferian Doctrine.
Cuando se produce un choque entre dos culturas, el perdedor es erradicado y el vencedor escribe los libros de historia, libros que cantan las glorias de su causa y denigran al enemigo conquistado.
One does not go to Vatican City with one’s ass hanging out.
As a tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment – its five points exchanged for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games’ spirit of inclusion and harmony.
I am a cosmic accident, and soon I will be dead.
For a thousand years,” Langdon continued, “legends of this secret have been passed on. The entire collection of documents, its power, and the secret it reveals have become known by a single name – Sangreal.
Debemos estar dispuestos a renunciar a la vida que hemos planeado para poder disfrutar de la vida que nos espera. JOSEPH CAMPBELL.
We fear what we do not understand...
The fog began to lift. Langdon felt a wave of relief. He hated hospitals, but they certainly beat aliens harvesting his testicles.
El miedo a ser juzgado por una deidad omnisciente ayuda a fomentar la buena conducta”.
Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture “without wax” – literally sine cera – was considered a “sincere” piece of art.