Fragments of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews

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D. Appleton, 1871 - 422 pages
 

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Page 330 - Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.
Page 126 - Was war ein Gott, der nur von außen stieße, Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen ließe! Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen, So daß, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermißt.
Page 12 - that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle, with a force whose direction is that of the line joining the two, and whose magnitude is directly as the product of their masses, and inversely as the square of their distances from each other.
Page 89 - Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! I never thought to ask, I never knew : But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
Page 96 - Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
Page 330 - Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears: ' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove: As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.
Page 130 - We are gifted with the power of imagination, and by this power we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses. There are tories, even in science, who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed.
Page 98 - ... this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and, indeed, a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced when I found a great author tripping, and was fairly able to pin him to a corner from which there was no escape ! As I speak, some of the sentences which exercised me when a boy rise to my recollection. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear.
Page 52 - By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

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