TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Politics is more difficult than physics.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index H > Category: Hedgerow

Hedgerow Quotes (2 quotes)

[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. … On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller’s works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the Heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic written by the finger of God upon the strata of the Earth!
In Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1889), 82-83.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aquarium (2)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Association (49)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blank (14)  |  Call (781)  |  Care (203)  |  Collection (68)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Critical (73)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Current (122)  |  Delusion (26)  |  Drop (77)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Element (322)  |  Enter (145)  |  Epic (12)  |  Excitation (9)  |  Exist (458)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Flash (49)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Geology (240)  |  Glacier (17)  |  Glance (36)  |  God (776)  |  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (150)  |  Grandest (10)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greek (109)  |  Halo (7)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Insect (89)  |  Interest (416)  |  Know (1538)  |  Learn (672)  |  George Henry Lewes (22)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Lose (165)  |  Man (2252)  |  Marked (55)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Hugh Miller (18)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Music (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Ode (3)  |  Open (277)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Painting (46)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Pass (241)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Plant (320)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Read (308)  |  Realize (157)  |  Realm (87)  |  Research (753)  |  Rock (176)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Science And Poetry (17)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sculpture (12)  |  Seaside (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Snow (39)  |  Snowflake (15)  |  Strata (37)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Treasure (59)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unscientific (13)  |  Vividly (11)  |  Vulgar (33)  |  Water (503)  |  Whoever (42)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)  |  Youth (109)

The earliest of my childhood recollections is being taken by my grandfather when he set out in the first warm days of early spring with a grubbing hoe (we called it a mattock) on his shoulder to seek the plants, the barks and roots from which the spring medicine for the household was prepared. If I could but remember all that went into that mysterious decoction and the exact method of preparation, and with judicious advertisement put the product upon the market, I would shortly be possessed of wealth which might be made to serve the useful purpose of increasing the salaries of all pathologists. … But, alas! I remember only that the basic ingredients were dogwood bark and sassafras root, and to these were added q.s. bloodroot, poke and yellow dock. That the medicine benefited my grandfather I have every reason to believe, for he was a hale, strong old man, firm in body and mind until the infection came against which even spring medicine was of no avail. That the medicine did me good I well know, for I can see before me even now the green on the south hillside of the old pasture, the sunlight in the strip of wood where the dogwood grew, the bright blossoms and the delicate pale green of the leaf of the sanguinaria, and the even lighter green of the tender buds of the sassafras in the hedgerow, and it is good to have such pictures deeply engraved in the memory.
From address, 'A Medical Retrospect'. Published in Yale Medical Journal (Oct 1910), 17, No. 2, 57. [Note: q.s. in an abbreviation for quantum sufficit meaning “as much as is sufficient,” when used as a quantity specification in medicine and pharmacology. -Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Bark (19)  |  Basic (144)  |  Being (1276)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Blossom (22)  |  Body (557)  |  Body And Mind (3)  |  Bright (81)  |  Call (781)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Early (196)  |  Exact (75)  |  Firm (47)  |  First (1302)  |  Good (906)  |  Grandfather (14)  |  Green (65)  |  Hillside (4)  |  Household (8)  |  Infection (27)  |  Ingredient (16)  |  Know (1538)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Man (2252)  |  Market (23)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Memory (144)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Man (6)  |  Pasture (15)  |  Pathologist (6)  |  Picture (148)  |  Plant (320)  |  Poke (5)  |  Possess (157)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Product (166)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reason (766)  |  Recollection (12)  |  Remember (189)  |  Root (121)  |  Salary (8)  |  See (1094)  |  Seek (218)  |  Set (400)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  South (39)  |  Spring (140)  |  Strong (182)  |  Sunlight (29)  |  Useful (260)  |  Warm (74)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Wood (97)  |  Yellow (31)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.