Universe

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born – pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if – listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go


-- e. e. cummings

Some people say the universe is curved. This means that if you travel far enough, you will eventually catch up with yourself.

Speak for yourself – I shall have much better things to do in the Universe than worrying about where to keep all my stuff. Indeed, I'm looking forward to being entirely without mass and weightless – free at last of all the heavy burdens of gravity....

What few understand is that if the universe is expanding...into where is it expanding?

the universe cannot be liked or disliked; you can be happy if it likes you.

I've never understood how people can talk about »alternate universes.«

If the universe is everything, everything meaning EVERYTHING, then...

How can there be more than one?

Alternate dimensions, sure.

But I would have to consider all of those alternate dimensions to be part of THE universe.

And maybe every time we make a decision, reality branches off, forming an infinite number of possible realities (which are all equally real, even if they can't be perceived simultaneously).

But all of those versions of reality... all part of THE universe.

Universe is not a word that you should pluralize.

At this very moment, I have a thought of such profundity that I dare not share it, for fear of upsetting the cosmological geometry of the universe.

Yeah, right....

I was very glad to learn a few seconds ago that scientists have begun to think of our universe in terms of fruit. However, I'm not too happy with the actual 'first fruits' of this research trend. Why does the universe have to be the size of a not too cheery grapefruit just after Big Bang? Such fiddly fruit – they always need sugar and take ages to open up. Or was that God's metaphor for the human species?

The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42