"These views were voiced by the school of 'optessimists', i.e. philosophers who derived optimism for the future from a pessimistic appraisal of the p… - Stanisław Lem

She was beautiful all right, beautiful in a way that was at once seductive, demonic, and raspberry.

It was not that the ocean depths served the creatures there with darkness, to protect them from attack — a darkness they could light, as they needed, with luminescence — but vice versa: the darkness gave rise to those that were pressure-resistant and could illuminate themselves.

In a rocket a person can burst like a bubble, or solidify completely, or boil, or explode in a fountain of blood so quickly he doesn't have time to shout out, and then only his bones will be clattering against the metal, and they'll go on circling in Newtonian orbit with an Einsteinian adjustment, our rattles of progress! And we'll go willingly, because it's a beautiful journey, till we arrive, and in these cabins, over this tableware, amid the immortal dishwashers, with our serried ranks of faithful lockers, our devoted toilets, here is our fulfillment.