All Quotes
2989 quotes in total
“These are notes in Latin that Newton wrote to himself that he titled: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions]”
“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.”
“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.”
“Paraphrases: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“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. )]”
“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”
“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”
“The Theology of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica : A Preliminary Survey ,”
“Biographia Britannica: Or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who Have Flourished in Great Britain from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Times, Volume 5”
“Also partially quoted in Sir Sidney Lee (ed.), The Dictionary of National Biography Vol.40”
“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me. The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir”
“He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious. Zorro”
“Where does taste end and smell begin? "Language of Flowers" anthologized in The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World edited by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson”
“Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences. Paula”
“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G”
“Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent. Of Love and Shadows”
“When Irina Bazili began working at Lark House in 2010, she was twenty”
“There are a lot of good people, Irina, but they keep quiet about it. It’s the bad ones who make a lot of noise, and that’s why they get noticed...”
“...you shouldn't stay trapped in the past or be frightened of the future. You only have one life, but if you live it well, that’s enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy? Every day counts, I can tell you!”
“...We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way, but we can clean it up. Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it’s silent, tranquil, and gentle; it’s a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self”
“Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures . "A Secret Vice" (lecture, 1931) published in The Monsters And The Critics And Other Essays (1983), edited by Christopher Tolkien”
“A Philologist on Esperanto”
“dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.”
“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”
“Nearly all marriages , even happy ones, are mistakes : in the sense that almost certainly (in a more Perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul”
“There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. Letter”
“That story was the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all. Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting. I woke up one day (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out. About " Leaf by Niggle ", in a letter to Stanley Unwin”
“is based on rural England and not any other country in the world... The toponymy of The Shire ...is a”
“I should say that, in addition to my tree”
“at Rotterdam Holland attended 28 March 1958, in response to Professor Lambers summarizing approximately”