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“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because it pleases him, and it pleases him because it is beautiful. Were nature not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” — Henri Poincaré
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“Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.” — Gertrude Stein
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“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.” — George Bernard Shaw
Misc
- Dorothy Parker named her dog Cliche.
- 27639 = 27 × 63 – 9
- Tikitiki cures beriberi.
- Can an object move itself?
- “The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost
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“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” — Neil Armstrong
(Thanks, Hugh.)
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“He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.” — Marcus Aurelius
Misc
- Newton was born the year that Galileo died.
- Cole Porter’s summer home was called No Trespassing.
- 66339 = (6 × 6)3 + 39
- Could you have had different parents?
- “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.” — Ben Franklin
UPDATE: The first item here is incorrect. The dates coincide only if one uses the Gregorian calendar to date Galileo’s death and the Julian to date Newton’s birth. The two events occurred 361 days apart, which puts them in separate years on both calendars. Apparently this is a very common error. (Thanks, Igor.)
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“The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic and carrying innumerable passengers. … It seems safe to say that such ideas are wholly visionary.” — Harvard College Observatory astronomer William Henry Pickering, 1908
Misc
- Dorothy Parker named Alexander Woollcott’s apartment “Wit’s End.”
- Can you look at something and imagine it at the same time?
- 36850 = (36 + 8) × 50
- AGNOSTIC is an anagram of COASTING.
- “The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.” — Goethe
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“My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a thousand times as much as there is to believe in, judging by experience.” — Augustus De Morgan
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“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.” — Thoreau
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“Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess.” — Samuel Johnson
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“Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.” — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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“If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.” — Socrates
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“I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat.” — George Bernard Shaw
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“We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.” — John Steinbeck
“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.” — Will Rogers
“Where is the Life we have lost in living?” — T.S. Eliot
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“We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.” — Nietzsche
“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” — Shakespeare
“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.” — Defoe
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“We think as we do mainly because other people think so.” — Samuel Butler
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” — Oscar Wilde
“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half-possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.” — Emerson
