Quotes from Dan Brown's Inferno

Bookish Mardi : Dan Brown's Inferno 

 “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."

 - Bertrand Zobrist 

In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno. 

Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

Remarkable Lines from the Book

"Time grows so fast." - Dr. Sinskey

"The coo of a single dove had changed everything." - Robert Langdon

"know only your own mission. Share nothing." - The Provost 

"Smile more often and take life a little less seriously." - Robert Langdon 

"Not all minds are created equal."  - Robert Langdon 

". . .never forget you are a miracle."  - Robert Langdon 

"Your memories will be muddled and  uncatalogued. Past, present and imagination all mixed together." - Sienna Brooks 

"But there comes a moment in history when ignorance is no longer a forgivable offense. . .a moment when only wisdom has the power to absolve."  - Bertrand Zobrist 

"Death is followed by birth."  - Bertrand Zobrist 

"The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death." - Bertrand Zobrist 

"You shall leave everything you love." - Dante Alighieri

"Time will heal the emptiness." - Robert Langdon

"When swimming into a dark tunne, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown . . .and pray for an exit." - Robert Langdon

"Mankind is hovering now in a purgatory of procrastination and indecision and personal greed. . . but the rings of hell awaits, just beneath our feet, waiting to consume us all." -  Bertrand Zoborist

"Madness is the WHO staring into the abyss and denying it is there. Madness is an ostrich who sticks her head in the sand while a pack of hyenas closes in around her."  - Bertrand Zoborist

"We are on the brink of the end of humanity." - Bertrand Zoborist

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"Sometimes, the only course of action is the lesser of two evils." - Bertrand Zoborist

"Mankind , if unchecked, functions like cancer." - Malthus

"Compassion is a universal language." - Sienna Brooks

"Nothing is more creative. . .nor destructive. . .than a brilliant mind with a purpose."  - Dr. Sinskey

"Sometimes we need to go up. . . to go down." - Robert Langdon

"Ninety percent of personal recognition is body language." - Sienna Brooks

"The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It's called DENIAL."  - Sienna Brooks 

"Denial is a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle." - Sienna Brooks 

 "No man is more prideful than he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world." - Robert Langdon

"Population growth is an exponential progression accuring within a system of finite ad limited resources." - Sienna Brooks

 ''. . .it was often easier to locate. . .using one's eyes. . .that using one's ears." - Robert Langdon

"E-books do have their moments." - Robert Langdon

"Avarice was an international sin." - Robert Langdon

In Mount Purgatory
"The envious must climb with their eyes sewn shut so they cannot covet; the prideful must carry huge stones on their backs to bend them low in a humble manner; the gluttonous must climb without food or water, there by suffering excruciating hunger; and the lustful must ascend through hot flames to purge themselves of passion's heat." - Robert Langdon

"Trust no one." - Robert Langdon

". . .let the forgotten past remain forgotten." - Dr. Ferris
 
"Triggering misplaced memories can be extremely disruptive to the psyche." - Sienna Brooks

"Treachery was the act of betraying a loved one." - Dante Aligheiri

"I do not fear death. . .for death transform visionaries into martyrs. . .convert noble ideas into powerful movements." -  Bertrand Zoborist 

"I fight fire. . .with fire."  - Bertrand Zoborist 

"Inner calm is critical to persuasive acting." - Dr. Ferris 

"Everything is upside down." - Dr. Sinskey

"Everything is a gradual process." - Robert Langdon

"Venice, the land of Italian elegance,'' - Robert Langdon

"The Lord works in mysterious ways." -  Robert Langdon

"If thine eyes offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee." - Robert Langdon

". . .forget the past. The past is the past. The futures, I sense, is what demands our immediate attention.'' - The Provost

"The world is is large, and history is long." - Robert Langdon

". . .human population growth was out of control, and the very survival of mankind was hanging in the balance." - Bertrand Zoborist 

"it is physically impossible for the human mind to think of nothing. The soul craves emotion, and it will continue to seek fuel for that emotion - good or bad." - Sienna's psychiatrist 

"You can save  the world. If  not you, then who? If not now, when?" - Bertrand Zoborist

 ". . .without some kind of drastic change, the end of our species is coming. . . The mathematics is indisputable." - Sienna Brooks 

"Nothing is permanent." -  Robert Langdon 

"La-ilaha-illa-allah.
There is no god but God." - Robert Langdon 

"History repeats itself."  - Karl Marx

"The masses are made up of individuals." - Robert Langdon

"Whether trying to prop up a stock a stock market, justify a war, win an election, or lure a terrorist out of a building, the world's power brokers relied on  massive disinformation schemes to help shape public perception." - Robert Langdon

"Every epic collapse, could be tracked back to a single moment - a chance meeting, a bad decision, an indiscceet glance." - The Provost

"Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him." -  Martin Luther

"God created life,  therefore man has no place creating images of life - not gods, not people, not even animals." - Robert Langdon

"Both Christianity and Islam are logo-centric, meaning they are focused on the "word". - Robert Langdon

"Great minds think alike." - Robert Langdon

"In the face of a possible pandemic, containment was the only viable option." - Bruder/ Dr. Sinskey

"Only one form of contagion travels faster than a virus. And that's FEAR."  - Dr. Sinskey

"Fighting a communicable disease was often like fighting a front fire: sometimes you had to drop back and surrender a battle in hopes of winning the war." - Bruder

". . .our species is on the brink of collapse. . .that we're facing a horrifying end  which is racing towards u so much faster than anyone dares accept." - Sienna Brooks

"You can't save the world, so don't sacrifice yourself  trying." - Sienna Brooks

" . . . we are capable of being better than we are. . . capable of taking action to avoid a catastrophic future." - Sienna Brooks

"Our own virility stalks us." - Robert Langdon

"Sometimes, the only choice is the lesser of two evils." -  Sienna Brooks

"Nature knows how to cull itself." - Sienna Brooks

"We are an organism that cannot seem to control our own numbers." - Sienna Brooks

". . .expect the worse from the people who hold power." - Sienna Brooks

". . .we are a species on the edge of collapse. . a population out of control." - Sienna Brooks

". . .the worst  kind of loneliness in the world is the isolation that comes from being misunderstood. It can make people lose their grasp or reality." - Sienna Brooks

". . .the human genome is an extremely delicate structure. . .a house of cards." - Sienna Brooks

". . .there is an enormous danger in attempting  to undo what has already been done." - Sienna Brooks

"Science is progressing so fast that nobody knows where the lines are drawn anymore." -  Dr. Sinskey

". . .we as humans have a moral obligation to participate in our evolutionary process." - Sienna Brooks

"Everything will soon be possible."  - Sienna Brooks

". . .nature has always found a way to keep the human population in check - plagues, famines, floods." - Sienna Brooks

"The ends justify the means." -  Sienna Brooks

"So long as they speak your name, you shall never die." - Robert Langdon

"In dangerous times, there is no greater sin than inaction." - Robert Langdon

"When it came to the circumstance of the world, denial  had become a global pandemic." - Robert Langdon

Manila - GATES OF HELL

A Second Sneak Peek of Dan Brown's Inferno


"Time will heal all the emptiness." - Dan Brown

It all started when Dr. Sienna Brooks had had her public service in our very own Philippines when Dan Brown himself started to describe Manila as the gates of hell in Inferno's Chapter 79. According to this author,

Manila is the most densely populated city on earth, which has six hours of traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and horrifying sex trades whose workers consisted of primarily young children, many of whom have been sold to pimps by their parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would be fed. It's a chaotic place of child prostitution, panhandlers, and pickpockets. Manila - the gates of hell.

. . . and ADD in your list the idea that this character had nearly been raped in the aforementioned place.

Isn't it indeed horrifying to know that instead of being featured in some novels as a country/city of which would be flowered and adorned with all the positive descriptions, we were labeled in the other way around? Isn't this a big slap in our faces?

Imagine this, a worldly-known and hailed author published another masterpiece of which we are featured yet in a negative manner? Imagine how many races and nationalities will be able to read such? And imagine how will we be belittled? Absolutely, scary!

It surely mirrors not just us, not just the ones in positions, not just the president himself but the kind of government we are having. Will we just let the world look at us in this wrong reflection? Will we just wait for another "48 years" for the government to work on this? Will  we either wait for the ones in positions or those big fishes to swim slowly for their trail to be finished? Or either way, will we be hesitant to do our own minute act of change? Undeniably, as what I've been telling my students, the prerogative is always ours to be made.

Let's just not be angry about this. Let us just be reminded that each individual is entitled for his own opinion. Probably those are the opinions of the author based on how he sees our country, based on what our country shows to them.

This, I believe isn't something that we should be angry about, instead it's a wake up call for us - Filipinos, may in position or not, may a president, an official, a government worker, or a naive layman - to show to these people who look so little of us. It's our wake up call that amidst their "dirty" descriptions to our country and to all of us we still have what it takes to progress and eradicate all these negativeness. Hence, we need to rise all together and show to them that we are capable to be called as "paradise". It's our wake-up call to prove to them that we aren't deserving to be labeled as the "gates of hell". 

Let us all work with all of our little things to be done, let's all start it within ourselves, and in due time, believe me, we'll be featured not as like this anymore. ^^

Sneak Peek of Dan Brown's Inferno

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." - Dan Brown 

 L'inferno di Dante

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 Dante's vision of hell rendered here in the living color.

Exalted as one of the preeminent works of world literature,  the Inferno was the first of the three books that made up Dante Alighiere's Divine Comedy - a 14,233-line epic poem describing Dante's brutal descent into the underworld, journey through purgatory, and eventual arrival into paradise. of the Comedy's three sections - Inferno, Purgatorio,  and Paradiso - Inferno  was by far the most widely read and memorable. 

Composed by Dante Alighieri in the early 1300s, Inferno had quite literally redefined medieval perceptions of damnation. Never before had the concept of hell captivated the masses in such an entertaining way. Overnight, Dante's work solidified the abstract concept of hell into a clear and terrifying vision - visceral, palpable, and unforgettable.  Not surprisingly, following the poem's release, the Catholic Church enjoyed an uptick in attendance from terrified sinners looking to avoid Dante's updated version of the "underworld". 

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As depicted by Botticelli, Dante's horrific version of hell was constructed as a subterranean funnel of suffering - a wrenched underground landscape of fire, brimstone, sewage, monsters, and Satan himself waiting at it's core. The pit was constructed in nine distinct levels, the Nine Rings of Hell, into which sinners were cast in accordance with the depth of their sin. Near the top, the lustful or "carnal malefactors"  were blown about by eternal windstorm, a symbol of their inability to control their desire. Beneath them the gluttons were forced to lie facedown in a vile slush of sewage, their mouths filled with the product of their excess. Deeper still, the heretics were trapped in flaming coffins, damned to eternal life. And so it went . . . getting worse and worse deeper one descended.

In the seven centuries since its publication, Dante's enduring vision of hell had inspired tribute, translations, and variations by some of history's greatest creative mind. Longfellow, Chaucer, Marx, Milton, Balzac, Borges, and even several popes had all written pieces based on Dante's Inferno. Monteverdi, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini composed pieces based on Dante's works, as Loreena McKennitt. Even the modern world of video games and iPad apps had no shortage of Dante-related offerings.