“Faced with the mind-surpassing grandeur of the universe, we cannot but admit that there is meaning which is greater than man.”

“Village is an idea; universe is an idea! If you cannot create an idea bigger than your village you live in, you remain inside your village; if we cannot create an idea greater than this universe, we remain inside this universe!”

“But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”

“Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain.”

“In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others”

“...we, and I mean humans, are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things. More than snakes, even. More than falling, or the dark. We trick ourselves into seeing meanings in things, when in fact all we are doing is grafting our meanings onto the universe to comfort ourselves. We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols. To admit that something is meaningless is just like falling backward into darkness." (p184)”