"The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out." (Henry St John, "The Philosophical Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke", 1754)
"Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts; the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface continual and yet hardly perceptible at any point which forms one of the great constituents of beauty?" (Edmund Burke, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", 1757)
"To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles." (Samuel Johnson, "The Rambler", 1791)
"Caught up in the limitless maze, the fragmentation and complication of modern natural science, and yearning for the recapture of simplicity, we must forever ask ourselves: Supposing he had known nature in its present state of complexity, a basic unity withal, how would Plato have coped with it?" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1822)
"The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler." (Philip Stanhope, "Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son", 1827)
"Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue." (Honoré de Balzac, "Letters of Two Brides", 1841-1842)
"In regard to what I have said of Mill... I should not have expressed so strong an opinion had I been thinking only of his political economy. There is much that is erroneous in his Principles, and he never had an idea what capital was, but the book is not the maze of self-contradictions which his logic undoubtedly is. If you have not examined his logical theories very critically, you will hardly be aware that upon the principal points he usually holds from three to six inconsistent views all at the same time." (William S Jevons, [Letter to H. S. Foxwell] 1875)
"This maze of symbols, electric and magnetic potential, vector potential, electric force, current, displacement, magnetic force, and induction, have been practically reduced to two, electric and magnetic force." (George F Fitzgerald, The Electrician, [bookmreview] 1893)
"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation." (Kate Chopin, "The Awakening", 1899)
No comments:
Post a Comment