Best stones & science Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio; and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.”

Mean Has Beens Different Science Understanding Ability Flower Capacity Stones Tasks Ill Sufficient Honour Shells Lowest Newton Unworthy Labourers

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson: LL.D. A New Edition in Twelve Volumes. With an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson: LL.D. A New Edition in Twelve Volumes. With an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq

“You are literally filled with the fruit of your own devices, with rats and mice and such small deer, paramecia, and entomostraceæ, and kicking things with horrid names, which you see in microscopes at the Polytechnic, and rush home and call for brandy-without the water-stone, and gravel, and dyspepsia, and fragments of your own muscular tissue tinged with your own bile.”

Home Science Names Water Stones Filled Fruit Devices Mice Rats Fragments Kicking Deer Tissues Microscopes Brandy Gravel

Author:Charles Kingsley

“When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe ... The whole wilderness is unity and interrelation, is alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.”

Trying Whole Seems Science Humanity Universe Alive Picks Stones Unity Familiar Wilderness Sympathetic Brotherly Talkative

Author:John Muir

“To say that there is a soul in stones simply in order to account for their production is unsatisfactory: for their production is not like the reproduction of living plants, and of animals which have senses. For all these we see reproducing their own species from their own seeds; and a stone does not do this at all. We never see stones reproduced from stones; ... because a stone seems to have no reproductive power at all.”

Doe Soul Seems Science Order Animal Rocks Stones Accounts Plant Species Productions Seeds Senses Reproduction Geology Reproducing

Book:Book of Minerals

Source: Book of Minerals

“There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued in all countries, and by all nations; it is the philosopher's stone, that turns all metals, and even stones, into gold, and suffers not want to break into its dwelling; it is the northwest passage, that brings the merchant's ships as soon to him as he can desire: in a word, it conquers all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay contribution.”

“Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones.”

Ends Science Space Sea Mankind Stones Agents Colorless

Book:The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan

“Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; ... 'So careful of the type', but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go' ... Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law- Tho' Nature red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.”

“The geologist, in those tables of stone which form his records, finds no examples of dynasties once passed away again returning. There has no repetition of the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of the mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man for its inhabitant; but it is to be the dynasty-"the kingdom"-not of glorified man made in the image of God, but of God himself in the form man.”

Source: The Testimony of the Rocks: Or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed

“The rocks have a history; gray and weatherworn, they are veterans of many battles; they have most of them marched in the ranks of vast stone brigades during the ice age; they have been torn from the hills, recruited from the mountaintops, and marshaled on the plains and in the valleys; and now the elemental war is over, there they lie waging a gentle but incessant warfare with time and slowly, oh, so slowly, yielding to its attacks!”

Source: John Burroughs' America: Selections from the Writings of the Naturalist

“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But bad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?”

Action Earth Science Sea Flower Stones Stronger Rage Mortality Boundless Brass

Author:William Shakespeare

“Who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?”

Ifs Men Humans Soul Earth Science Sweet Flower Kissing Rivers Stones Green Fruit Fishes Woods Seeds Tone Mail Harvest Human Soul Melting Meadows Pebbles Pulp

Author:John Keats

“Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.”

Different Use Form Science Animal Numbers Existence Silence Shapes Mountain Europe Stones Species Vanity Vain Collections Midst Shells Sheer Fossils Naturalist

Author:Carl Linnaeus

“Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules [i.e. atoms] out of which these systems are built-the foundation stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn.‎ They continue to this day as they were created-perfect in number and measure and weight.”

Source: The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell

“Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility.”

“I have never seen the Philosopher's Stone that turns lead into Gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a Man's Gold into Lead.”

Knows Men Science Turns Known Knowledge Stones Gold Philosopher Pursuit Poor Richard

Book:The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac

Source: The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac

“Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.”

Science Sun Stones Accounts Scientific Truth

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“The Dark Ages may return-the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science; and what might now shower immeasureable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction. Beware! I say. Time may be short. Referring to the discovery of atomic energy.”

Source: The Sinews of Peace: Post-war Speeches

“Stones grow, plants grow, and live, animals grow live and feel.”

Life Feels Science Grows Animal Stones Plant

Author:Carl Linnaeus

“I am convinced, by repeated observation, that marbles, lime-stones, chalks, marls, clays, sand, and almost all terrestrial substances, wherever situated, are full of shells and other spoils of the ocean.”

Science Rocks Ocean Stones Convinced Observation Substance Sand Shells Clay Spoil Marble Geology Chalk Limes

Book:Natural History, General and Particular

Source: Natural History, General and Particular

“Our model of Nature should not be like a building-a handsome structure for the populace to admire, until in the course of time some one takes away a corner stone and the edifice comes toppling down. It should be like an engine with movable parts. We need not fix the position of any one lever; that is to be adjusted from time to time as the latest observations indicate. The aim of the theorist is to know the train of wheels which the lever sets in motion-that binding of the parts which is the soul of the engine.”

Knows Needs Should Soul Science Courses Knowledge Position Building Models Stones Aim Structure Train Corners Admire Observation Wheels Engines Handsome Binding Theorists Edifice Levers

Author:Arthur Eddington

“A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits.”

Source: Theory of the Earth: With Proofs and Illustrations

“In science its main worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to something beyond. Even [Newton's] Principia ... is truly but the beginning of a natural philosophy. Co-author with his brother Julius Hare.”

Philosophy Science Natural Brother Stones Temporary Newton Stepping Stones Hares Julius Natural Philosophy Principia

Author:Augustus William Hare

“How peacefully he sleep! Yet may his ever-questing spirit, freed at length from all the frettings of this little world, Wander at will among the uncharted stars. Fairfield his name. Perchance celestial fields disclosing long sought secrets of the past Spread 'neath his enraptured gaze And beasts and men that to his earthly sight were merely bits of stone shall live again to gladden those eager eyes. o let us picture him-enthusiast-scientist-friend- Seeker of truth and light through all eternity!”

“It would indeed be a great delusion, if we stated that those sports of Nature [we find] enclosed in rocks are there by chance or by some vague creative power. Ah, that would be superficial indeed! In reality, those shells, which once were alive in water and are now dead and decomposed, were made thus by time not Nature; and what we now find as very hard, figured stone, was once soft mud and which received the impression of the shape of a shell, as I have frequently demonstrated.”

Ifs Life Made Hard Reality Would Be Science Sports Water Nature Chance Creative Alive Rocks Creation Shapes Stones Impression Delusion Shells Vague Superficial Mud Creative Power

Author:Agostino Scilla

“When the uncultured man sees a stone in the road it tells him no story other than the fact that he sees a stone ... The scientist looking at the same stone perhaps will stop, and with a hammer break it open, when the newly exposed faces of the rock will have written upon them a history that is as real to him as the printed page.”

Men Real Facts Stories Reality Faces Science Culture Break History Written Rocks Pages Stones Scientist Exposed Hammers Printed

Book:Nature's Miracles: Familiar Talks on Science

Source: Nature's Miracles: Familiar Talks on Science

Stones Quotes

Related topics

Stones Quotes