#curiosity

30 quotes

“Subito salse in me due cose: paura e desiderio: paura per la minacciante e scura spelonca, desiderio per vedere se là entro fusse alcuna miracolosa cosa. ( Ancient Italian ) At once two things came to mind: fear and desire: fear of the threatening dark cave, desire to see if there was anything miraculous within it.(referring to the "Cave of Acquabianca" or "La Ferrera" on Lake Comuntain).”

“Fa vini potenti e assai, … e ‘l vino vale el più uno soldo il boccale e la libbra della vitella un soldo e ‘l sale 10 dinari, e ‘l simile il burro, ed è la loro libbra 30 once, e l’ova un soldo la soldata. ( Modern Italian ) He makes powerful and very strong wines, … and the wine is worth more than a penny per jug and the pound of veal a penny and the salt 10 denarii, and so is the butter, and their pound is 30 ounces, and the eggs a penny.”

“Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. As quoted in The 48 Laws of Power (2000) by Robert Greene, p. 33”

“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect . A Treatise on Painting (1651); "The Paragone"; compiled by Francesco Melzi prior to 1542, first published as Trattato della pittura by Raffaelo du Fresne”

“1. Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves , and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those Oaths. 2. When , therefore, the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases ... Letter to Dr. Covel Feb. 21, (1688”

“Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center. Letter to Edmund Halley (June 20, 1686) quoted in I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith , ed.s, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2002) p. 204”

“I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [5 February 1676 ( O.S. )]”

“Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.”

“This is a variation on a much older adage, which Roger Bacon attributed to Aristotle : Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas . Bacon was perhaps paraphrasing a statement in the Nicomachean Ethics : Where both are friends, it is right to prefer truth.”

“As I was led to keep in my study during many months worms in pots filled with earth, I became interested in them, and wished to learn how far they acted consciously, and how much mental power they displayed. Introduction, p. 2”

“(Detractors sometimes claim Darwin thought that the cell was an undifferentiated mass of protoplasm. Anyone reading the passage above will realize that Darwin thought no such thing.)”

“(It is sometimes claimed that modern biologist are dogmatic "Darwinists" who uncritically accept all of Darwin's ideas. This is false: No one today accepts Darwin's hypothesis of gemmules and pangenesis .)”