Usual Quotes - Page 27

• The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Book, Science, Names

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• As usual, nature's imagination far surpasses our own, as we have seen from the other theories which are subtle and deep.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Nature, Imagination, Theory

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.128, Princeton University Press

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• As part of my research for An Anthology of Authors' Atrocity Stories About Publishers, I conducted a study (employing my usual controls) that showed the average shelf life of a trade book to be somewhere between milk and yoghurt.

  Calvin Trillin

  Book, Average, Milk

  Calvin Trillin (1987). “Uncivil liberties”, Penguin Group USA

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• Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies,omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every pagewe soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated.

  David Hume

  Battle, Oracles, May

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• The truth is paradoxical to the extent of being exactly contrary to the usual perception.

  Georges Bataille

  Perception, Truth Is, Paradoxical

  Georges Bataille (1988). “The accursed share: an essay on general economy”

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• It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Reading, Silly

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Country, Truth

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.177, David M Gross

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• It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Wisdom, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.192, David R. Godine Publisher

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• The only reason anyone would sell salt more cheaply than usual would be because he was desperate for money. And anyone who took advantage of that situation would be showing a lack of respect for the sweat and struggle of the man who laboured to produce it.

  Paulo Coelho

  Struggle, Men, Sweat

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• There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Morning, Taken

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• My message is to forget about dichotomies. The Brain Opera is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voices - so I do consider it an opera.

  Tod Machover

  Journey, Voice, Brain

  Scientific American Interview, www.scientificamerican.com.

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• In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Eye, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

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• Boredom turns to panic if my beloved leaves before the usual time.

  Mason Cooley

  Time, Boredom, Routine

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• A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid, nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class, - too much money, and too few ideas.

  Mary Augusta Ward

  Stupid, Character, Ideas

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• Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Death, Men, Succeed

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• We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.

  Anton Chekhov

  Life, Pain, Generations

  Note-Book of Anton Chekhov, 1921.

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• The usual method of creation for most human beings is a three-step process involving thought, word, and deed or action. First comes thought; the formative idea; the initial concept. Then comes the word. Most thoughts ultimately form themselves into words, which are often then written or spoken. This gives added energy to the thought, pushing it out into the world, where it can be noticed by others. Finally, in some cases words are put into action, and you have what you call a result; a physical world manifestation of what all started with a thought.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Religious, Ideas

  Neale Donald Walsch (1996). “Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.164, Penguin

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• Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Should, Happens

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.238, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A candle is a living, flickering light. It can easily be blown out. As we watch a candle burn we see the wax diminish. It melts away - a symbol for life. [...]
  Candles have long been central to worship.
  By lighting them we announce that we are entering into a different sense of time.
  Not the usual ticktock time of daily living, but sacred time, a timeless time.

  Gunilla Brodde Norris

  Life, Time, Book

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• the Republicans love to say that the Democratic Party is ruled by 'special interests.' But when pressed to name these 'special interests,' the usual reply is women, blacks, teachers, and unions. Those are 'special interests' to be proud of - because together they comprise the majority of Americans. What about the 'special interests' that dominate the Republican Party - the oil companies, the banks, the gun lobby, and the apostles of religious intolerance?

  Geraldine Ferraro

  Teacher, Religious, Party

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• My adolescence progressed normally: enough misery to keep the death wish my usual state, an occasional high to keep me from actually taking the gas-pipe.

  Faye Moskowitz

  Inspirational, Teenage, Wish

  Faye Moskowitz (2011). “And the Bridge Is Love”, p.57, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• The kind of lecture which I have been so kindly invited to give, and which now appears in book form, gives one a rare opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

  Hermann Bondi

  Book, Opportunity, Giving

  "Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory". Book by Hermann Bondi (p. v), 1967.

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• ... an opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

  Hermann Bondi

  Opportunity, Buzz, Bees

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• CBS News finally received anthrax in the mail. As usual, we're number three.

  David Letterman

  Numbers, Three, News

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• It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else.

  Plutarch

  Envious, Consolation, Inferiors

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