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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 99c7e15 | Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light. | light | John Webster | |
| 52cf793 | Since the atoms are indestructible, the disintegration of human body after death should be actually considered as the dispersion of the separate filaments (except probably those forming the bones) in all different directions. | George Gamow | ||
| 4d8197a | I've found out since that such people don't know what they're doing, and get insulted when you make some suggestion or criticism. | Richard P. Feynman | ||
| 6b44ec5 | If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an 'oomph,' this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square o.. | explainability imagination pseudoscience rationalization rigor science scrutiny theory | Richard P. Feynman | |
| dabdf83 | How can we tell whether the rules which we "guess" at are really right if we cannot analyze the game very well? There are, roughly speaking, three ways. First, there may be situations where nature has arranged, or we arrange nature, to be simple and to have so few parts that we can predict exactly what will happen, and thus we can check how our rules work. (In one corner of the board there may be only a few chess pieces at work, and that we.. | Richard P. Feynman | ||
| 7592688 | THE QUESTION IS, OF COURSE, IS IT GOING TO BE POSSIBLE TO AMALGAMATE EVERYTHING, AND MERELY DISCOVER THAT THIS WORLD REPRESENTS DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF ONE THING? | physics science | Richard P. Feynman | |
| 8586b71 | if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. | scientific-method | Richard P. Feynman | |
| 1960366 | I noticed that the [drawing] teacher didn't tell people much... Instead, he tried to inspire us to experiment with new approaches. I thought of how we teach physics: We have so many techniques - so many mathematical methods - that we never stop telling the students how to do things. On the other hand, the drawing teacher is afraid to tell you anything. If your lines are very heavy, the teacher can't say, "Your lines are too heavy." because .. | physics richard-feynman teaching | Richard Feynman | |
| 762ba21 | If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back a.. | physics richard-feynman six-easy-pieces | Richard P. Feynman | |
| e7a775b | As I always used to tell Thomas Wolfe, there are three things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 98471ae | In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 518077e | Australians are the biggest gamblers on the planet - one of the more arresting statistics I saw was that the country has less than 1 per cent of the world's population but more than 20 per cent of its slot machines | Bill Bryson | ||
| a30992d | Plants began the process of land colonization about 450 million years ago, accompanied of necessity by tiny mites and other organisms which they needed to break down and recycle dead organic matter on their behalf. Larger animals took a little longer to emerge, but by about 400 million years ago they were venturing out of the water, too. Popular illustrations have encouraged us to envision the first venturesome land dwellers as a kind of am.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| cb20a1c | An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth's atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn't get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, ever.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 390fd28 | Shakespeare 'never owned a book,' a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probably that.. | history shakespeare | Bill Bryson | |
| be417e2 | When you write books for a living, you come to realize that while not all people who write to authors are strange, all people who are strange write to authors. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 48ec90c | If there's one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy--something we could all do with more of in our lives. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 0bd2a1a | The indigestible parts of giant squid, in particular their beaks, accumulate in sperm whales' stomachs into the substance known as ambergris, which is used as a fixative in perfumes. The next time you spray on Chanel Number 5 (assuming you do), you may wish to reflect that you are dousing yourself in distillate of unseen sea monster. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 057733d | Imagine trying to live in a world dominated by dihydrogen oxide, a compound that has no taste or smell and is so variable in its properties that it is generally benign but at other times swiftly lethal. Depending on its state, it can scald you or freeze you. In the presence of certain organic molecules it can form carbonic acids so nasty that they can strip the leaves from trees and eat the faces off statuary. In bulk, when agitated, it can.. | humor water | Bill Bryson | |
| adc05b8 | You can get some sense of the immaterial quality of clouds by strolling through fog--which is, after all, nothing more than a cloud that lacks the will to fly. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 8164d2c | Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled everything up, Ian Tattersal.. | Bill Bryson | ||
| 1448c0d | Let's be about it, people. | David Weber | ||
| 34336fb | Never keep a lawyer waiting. They have friends in low and infernal places. | David Weber | ||
| 00560d0 | Nuts didn't need religion to make them nuts, Allison had long since decided, but it did seem to give them a certain added sense of commitment to whatever goals their nutdom decided to embrace. | David Weber | ||
| bdc781e | We do not argue that war is better than peace; we are not so stupid as that. But it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from farmers and craftworkers, when the child can be enslaved or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest, and evil. | Elizabeth Moon | ||
| e08fb48 | If a military life was long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror--as one of her instructors had said--then civilian life seemed to be long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of dismal reflection. | Elizabeth Moon | ||
| 3d8cdd0 | Like ghosts the children walked across the lawn on their bare feet. The moon was full. Above the damp grass hung a veil of mist, luminous with moonlight and spangled with fireflies. There was no wind, and the sound of the brook was very distinct, tinkling, splashing, running softly. It made Mona think of an ancient fountain, shaped like a shell, covered with moss, and set in a secluded garden. Something she half remembered, or imagined. | Elizabeth Enright | ||
| d6287f0 | April 19 And now it is spring. Birds are singing. Wistful notes and jubilant. And bare streets and no need for coats, and skipping ropes and bicycles and a thin new moon. | Elizabeth Smart | ||
| 4e937fe | Oh just wait. It takes a lot of time, that's all...You'll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you've ever had. A certain richness happens only later in life. I guess its' a kind of mellowing. p 80 talking about marriage and husbands | Elizabeth Berg | ||
| 440f92a | He was one of your wicked, fascinating men. After he got married he left off being fascinating and just kept on being wicked. | matter-of-fact | L.M. Montgomery | |
| dfec1f3 | I detest that woman [Rachel Lynde] more than anybody I know. She can put a whole sermon, text, comment, and application, into six words, and throw it at you like a brick. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 6bc557e | A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing... | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 0fd861d | I think it's something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper ans she said to Mr. Sloane 'I see here that another octogenarian has just died. What is an Octogenarian, Peter?' And Mr. Sloane said he didn't know, but they must be very sickly creatures, for you never heard tell of them but they were dying. | dying funny octogenarian | L. M. Montgomery | |
| ef0b9ee | Oh, I don't wonder babies always cry when they wake up in the night. So often I want to do it too. | crying night | L.M. Montgomery | |
| e914954 | But is there not something strange about any room that has been occupied through generations? Death has lurked in it...love has been rosy red in it...births have been here...all the passions...all the hopes. It is full of wraths. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| e299ac3 | The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea's surface in to long, silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it, from every point and headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand-dunes and the headlands where gulls were huddling. The sky was faintly filmed over with scarfs of silken vapor. Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An evening star was watching over th.. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 70ed290 | She has no serious ideals at all-her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good time. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 0bbfd67 | Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after a while and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came. | hurt pain | L.M. Montgomery | |
| a1e4290 | It must be admitted frankly that Aunt Becky was not particularly beloved by her clan. She was too fond of telling them what she called the plain truth. And, as Uncle Pippin said, while the truth was all right, , there was no sense in pouring out great gobs of it around where it wasn't wanted. To Aunt Becky, however, tact and diplomacy and discretion, never to mention any consideration for any one's feelings, were things unknown. | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 044274b | Am i talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I "can" stop when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult." | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 982e557 | But there is a destiny which shapes the ends of young misses who are born with the itch for writing tingling in their baby fingertips, and in the fullness of time this destiny gave to Emily the desire of her heart--gave | L.M. Montgomery | ||
| 886c895 | I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry...and I think it's nicer...' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed... 'to look at it through poetry. | poetry prose | L.M. Montgomery | |
| e934e68 | We have The Idylls of the King in English class this term. I like some things in them, but I detest Tennyson's Arthur. If I had been Guinevere I'd have boxed his ears - but I wouldn't have been unfaithful to him for Lancelot, who was just as odious in a different way. As for Geraint, if I had been Enid I'd have bitten him. These 'patient Griseldas' deserve all they get. | arthurian-legend guinevere king-arthur lancelot tennyson | L.M. Montgomery | |
| 7ea1dc8 | Well, that is all the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who's this Archduke man who has been murdered?" "What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous answer to her question, which destiny was even then preparing. "Someone is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It's their normal condition and I don't really think that.. | L.M. Montgomery |