“Da Vinci was as great a mechanic and inventor as were Newton and his friends. Yet a glance at his notebooks shows us that what fascinated him about nature was its variety, its infinite adaptability, the fitness and the individuality of all its parts. By contrast what made astronomy a pleasure to Newton was its unity, its singleness, its model of a nature in which the diversified parts were mere disguises for the same blank atoms.” MadeShowsScienceNatureNaturalPleasureModelsInfiniteUnityMereIndividualityAstronomyVarietyAtomsFascinatedContrastBlankDisguiseGlancesMechanicInventorNotebookNewtonAdaptabilitySingleness Book:The Common Sense of Science Source: The Common Sense of Science
“All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.” ArtMadeFormPurposeDivineHolyEssenceMereComplexesPatientStorytellingColourMagicianSecrecyMedievalSymbolicPonderingPortraitureTalismans Author:William Butler Yeats
“It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.” MadeUsePurposeLanguageMankindHorrorTruth IsMereAncestorInterfereMaliceIncompetence Author:Chinua Achebe
“If there is to be responsible party government, the party label must be something more than a mere device for securing office. Unless those who are elected under the same party designation are willing to assume sufficient responsibility and exhibit sufficient loyalty and coherence, so that they can cooperate with each other in the support of the broad general principles, of the party platform, the election is merely a mockery, no decision is made at the polls, and there is no representation of the popular will.” IfsMadeGovernmentDecisionPartyResponsibilityPrinciplesSupportWillingOfficeResponsibleElectionAssumingMereLoyaltyLabelsSufficientDevicesBroadsPlatformsRepresentationPollsExhibitsMockeryBeing ResponsibleCoherenceDesignation Author:Calvin Coolidge
“A person who wills to have a good will, already has a good will--in its rudiments. There is solid satisfaction in knowing that the mere desire to get out of an old habit is a material advance upon the condition of submergence in that habit. The longest step toward cleanliness is made when one gains--nothing but dissatisfaction with dirt.” PersonsMadeDesireStepsKnowingConditionsMaterialsHabitGainsMereSatisfactionDirtGood WillDissatisfactionCleanlinessOld Habits Book:The Meaning of God in Human Experience Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience
“Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address of the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance.” PersonsMadeSeemsSpiritualLawUniverseClassModernObjectsCollegeExpressionLetting GoWorshipPerformancesStructureMereInstanceAbstractDivinityAddressesGraduatesFrankIdealismCultScandalDeitiesTranscendentalSuperhumanGraduating Class Author:William James