Novelty Quotes - Page 15

• A philosophy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is the reason, I suspect, why the novelties in philosophy are only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals.

  T. S. Eliot

  Faith, Philosophy, Discipline

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• A man and a woman are new to one another throughout a life-time, in the rhythm of marriage that matches the rhythm of the year. Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the repulsion, always different, always new.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sex, Men, Years

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires (2002). “Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'”, p.323, Cambridge University Press

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• Display startling novelty-rise afresh like the sun every day. Change too the scene on which you shine, so that you rloss may be felt in the old scenes of your triumph, while the novelty of your powers wins applause in the new.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Winning, Advice, Shining

  Baltasar Gracian (2006). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.34, Shambhala Publications

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• The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing than worshipping ... 'Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god.

  C. S. Lewis

  Military, War, Thinking

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• Ultimate novelty must be a situation where all boundaries are dissolved.

  Terence McKenna

  Boundaries, Situation, Ultimate

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• Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Greatness, Watches

  Samuel Johnson (1804). “The beauties of Samuel Johnson: maxims and observations. To which are now added, biographical anecdotes of the doctor, his life [&c.].”, p.103

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• The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability that arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops. Emergence results in the creation of novelty, and this novelty is often qualitatively different from the phenomenon out of which it emerged.

  Fritjof Capra

  Science, Differences, Environmental

  Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi (2014). “The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”, p.319, Cambridge University Press

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• Chance is the only source of true novelty.

  Francis Crick

  Life, Science, Chance

  Life Itself (p. 82)

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• Nothing is more despicable than the old age of a passionate man. When the vigour of youth fails him, and his amusements pall with frequent repetition, his occasional rage sinks by decay of strength into peevishness; that peevishness, for want of novelty and variety, becomes habitual; the world falls off from around him, and he is left, as Homer expresses it, to devour his own heart in solitude and contempt.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Fall, Heart, Men

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• Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record.

  Ernst Mayr

  Long, Population, Different

  Ernst Mayr (1991). “One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought”, p.138, Harvard University Press

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• I hadn't yet realised that learning to be a staff officer is something like learning to milk a cow. The novelty soon wears off, and the job becomes burdensome, and smelly. As a boy I learned the hard way that if you demonstrated skill at milking a cow, somebody would keep you milking one. It's the same way being a good staff officer.

  Aubrey Newman

  Jobs, Military, Boys

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• Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Book, Knowledge, Science

  Discours sur le Style (1753)

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• The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Inspirational, Believe, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “Works”, p.116

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• Life purpose may be shifted from achieving a 'steady state' (an equilibrium between desires and plausibilities) to the excitement of running after novelties. In other words, be guided by new desires, not by extant needs.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Running, Desire, Needs

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

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• Our consumer-oriented economy wouldn't survive without economic growth. The whole mechanism depends on invention and insinuation of novelties, arousing new wants, seduction and temptation. This is the problem we face - much more than recapitalizing the banks. The question is: Is that kind of economy sustainable?

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Temptation, Growth, Faces

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

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• Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Party, Tea, Meals

  Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (2004). “The Physiology of Taste”, p.326, Penguin UK

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• We are all, always, the desire not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to be, to be more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death. That is what it is.

  Henri Barbusse

  Wisdom, Ideas, Humanity

  "The Inferno". Book by Henri Barbusse, 1917.

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• If one had to single out the most revolutionary novelty furnished by Qumran, its contribution to our understanding of the genesis of Jewish literary compositions could justifiably be our primary choice.

  Geza Vermes

  Choices, Understanding, Revolutionary

  "The Dead Sea Scrolls in English". Book by Geza Vermes (Introduction, p. 23), 1962.

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• Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Flirting, Giving, Fruit

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• As far as my creative urge is concerned, I do sit down and write my own music...I'll tell you a writer who I think is a genius: Ray Stevens. He comes up with some of the most fantastic novelty ideas. Dolly Parton also writes well. I like a lot of songs, a lot of writers.

  Boudleaux Bryant

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• There is little novelty in the detective who cannot solve himself.

  Ben H. Winters

  Littles, Detectives, Solve

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• Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Art, Moments

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.195

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• Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve; we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Giving, May, Improvement

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.14

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• That Francis Bacon retains his reputation gained, is not strange to any that knows him. The unusual words wherewith he had spangled his speech, were rather gracious for their propriety than strange for their novelty, and like to serve both for occasions to report and means to remember his argument. Certain sentences of his , somewhat obscure, and as it were presuming upon their capacities will, I fear, make some of them rather admire than commend him. In sum, all is as well as words can make it, and if it please Her Majesty to add deeds, the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook.

  Edward Coke

  Mean, Deeds, May

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• What WE represent is the nexus of concrescent novelty that has been moving itself together, complexifying itself, folding itself in upon itself for billions and billions of years. There is, so far as we know, nothing more advanced than what is sitting behind your eyes. The human neocortex is the most densely ramified complexified structure in the known universe.

  Terence McKenna

  Moving, Eye, Years

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