"Thus, when Mermoz first crossed the South Atlantic in a hydroplane, as day was dying he ran foul of the Black Hole region, off Africa. Straight ahead of him were the tails of tornadoes rising minute by minute gradually higher, rising as a wall is built; and then the night came down upon these preliminaries and swallowed them up; and when, an hour later, he slipped under the clouds, he came out into a fantastic kingdom.

Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they were supporting the squat and lowering arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight toward the exit from the temple. And this spectacle was so overwhelming that only after he had got through the Black Hole did Mermoz awaken to the fact that he had not been afraid."

-Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Montagne Pelée, 1902

"Thursday 8 May was Ascension Day. The morning was calm, although a cloud of ash covered the sky over St Pierre. The governor, his wife and a small party of officials set off by boat for Le Prêcheur. They were never seen again.

... At 8:02 there was a blinding flash, and then a sound like the roar of thousands of cannons. A directed, low-angle blast, followed by a nuée ardente, left the summit by the little notch on the southwestern rim of the caldera, swept down the Rivière Blanche valley, rushed southwards beyond it at speeds estimated between 200km and 500km per hour, and at temperatures ranging between 200ºC and 450ºC, devastated an area of 58 [square] km, and overwhelmed St Pierre in less than two minutes. The blast and then the incandescent cloud of swirling ash, steam, and an emulsion of lava blocks, boulders, pumice, toxic gases, trees and masonry hurtled down the streets, into the houses, into the cathedral crowded with worshippers, and killed more than 28000 people in the space of two fatal breaths."

-Volcanoes, Alwyn Scarth

"To the caterpillar-hunter, "What has been eating this bush?" is not slang, but a question of importance and great interest."

-Caterpillars and Their Moths, Ida M. Eliot and Caroline Gray Soule

"My love for the butterflies took on the form of adoration. There was not a delicate, gaudy, winged creature of day that did not make so strong an appeal to my heart as to be almost painful. It seemed to me that the most exquisite thoughts of God for our pleasure were materialized in their beauty. My soul always craved colour, and more brilliancy could be found on one butterfly wing than on many flower faces."

"Having been taught that God created the heavens, earth and all things therein, I understood it to mean a literal creation of each separate thing and creature, as when my father cut down a tree and hewed it into a beam. I would spend hours sitting so immovably among the flowers of our garden that the butterflies would mistake me for a plant and alight on my head and hands, while I strove to conceive the greatness of a Being who could devise and colour all those different butterfly wings. I would try to decide whether He created the birds, flowers, or butterflies first; ultimately coming to the conclusion that he put His most exquisite material into the butterflies, and then did the best He could with what remained, on the birds and flowers."

-Moths of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter

a heart beneath a stone

"Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! ... The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state."

"If no one loved, the sun would go out."

-Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

"When we show a friend a city one has already visited, we feel the same pride as when we point out a woman whose lover we have been."

-The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

"Her face wore an expression like a moth."

–A Prisoner in Fairyland, Algernon Blackwood

should be a painting

"I lived a long time under vast porticoes
whose splendors altered with the sea all day;
by evening their majestic pillars turned,
row after row, into tall basalt caves.

Solemn and magical the waves rolled in
bearing images of heaven on the swell,
blending the sovereign music that they made
with sunset colors mirrored in my eyes."

-from "Previous Existence," Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire

in dreams

"...smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruins of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory."

"And since the dream of a woman who would love me was always present in my mind, during those summers that dream was impregnated with the coolness of the running waters; and whichever woman I conjured up, clusters of violet and reddish flowers would rise immediately on either side of her like complementary colors."

–Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

in the shimmering evenings of summer...

"He kissed her on her splendid eyes; he grew into her young Maenad's body, his heart numbed deliciously against the pressure of her narrow breasts. She was as lithe and yielding to his sustaining hand as a willow rod – she was bird-swift, more elusive in repose than the dancing water-motes upon her face. He held her tightly lest she grow into the tree again, or be gone amid the wood like smoke."

-Look Homeward, Angel; Thomas Wolfe

melancholic

"There was that touch of melancholy in his fastidious appearance that suggested the atmosphere of frustrated dreams."

–A Prisoner in Fairyland, Algernon Blackwood

oh, to be wealthy and bored...

"I'd ride a llama through a sea of champagne for a new experience."

–Michael O'Halloran, Gene Stratton-Porter