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: “We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Ravage

Ravage Quotes (7 quotes)

In the year of our Lord 729, two comets appeared around the sun, striking terror into all who saw them. One comet rose early and preceded the sun, while the other followed the setting sun at evening, seeming to portend awful calamity to east and west alike. Or else, since one comet was the precursor of day and the other of night, they indicated that mankind was menaced by evils at both times. They appeared in the month of January, and remained visible for about a fortnight, pointing their fiery torches northward as though to set the welkin aflame. At this time, a swarm of Saracens ravaged Gaul with horrible slaughter; … Both the outset and course of Ceolwulfs reign were filled by so many grave disturbances that it is quite impossible to know what to write about them or what the outcome will be.
Bede
From Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Book V, Chap. XXIII., as translated by Leo Sherley-Price, revised by R.E. Latham, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (1955, 1990), 323. Note: The observation likely was on a single comet seen twice each day. The event is also in both the Laud and Parker manuscripts of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Science quotes on:  |  Alike (60)  |  Appear (122)  |  Awful (9)  |  Both (496)  |  Calamity (11)  |  Comet (65)  |  Course (413)  |  Day (43)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Early (196)  |  Evil (122)  |  Fiery (5)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fortnight (3)  |  Grave (52)  |  Horrible (10)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lord (97)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Menace (7)  |  Month (91)  |  Night (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Portend (2)  |  Precursor (5)  |  Reign (24)  |  Remain (355)  |  Rose (36)  |  Saracen (2)  |  Saw (160)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Slaughter (8)  |  Striking (48)  |  Sun (407)  |  Swarm (15)  |  Terror (32)  |  Time (1911)  |  Torch (13)  |  Two (936)  |  Visible (87)  |  Will (2350)  |  Write (250)  |  Year (963)

In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 729, two comets appeared about the sun, to the great terror of the beholders. One of them went before the rising sun in the morning, the other followed him when he set at night, as it were presaging much destruction to the east and west; one was the forerunner of the day, and the other of the night, to signify that mortals were threatened with calamities at both times. They carried their flaming tails towards the north, as it were ready to set the world on fire. They appeared in January, and continued nearly a fortnight. At which time a dreadful plague of Saracens ravaged France with miserable slaughter; … the beginning and progress of Ceolwulf’s reign were so filled with commotions, that it cannot yet be known what is to be said concerning them, or what end they will have.
Bede
From Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Book V, Chap. XXIII, as translated in J.A. Giles (ed.), The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. Also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1894), 291-292. The editor reprinted the translation based on the 1723 work of John Stevens into modern English. Note: The observation likely was on a single comet seen twice each day. The event is also in both the Laud and Parker manuscripts of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Beholder (2)  |  Both (496)  |  Calamity (11)  |  Comet (65)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Dreadful (16)  |  End (603)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flame (44)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forerunner (4)  |  Fortnight (3)  |  France (29)  |  Great (1610)  |  Known (453)  |  Lord (97)  |  Miserable (8)  |  Morning (98)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Night (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plague (42)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reign (24)  |  Rising (44)  |  Saracen (2)  |  Set (400)  |  Signify (17)  |  Slaughter (8)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tail (21)  |  Terror (32)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

It is supposed that the ancients were ignorant of the law in hydraulics, by which water, in a tube, will rise as high as the fountain-head; and hence they carried their stupendous aqueducts horizontally, from hill-top to hill-top, upon lofty arches, with an incredible expenditure of labor and money. The knowledge of a single law, now familiar to every well-instructed school-boy,— namely, that water seeks a level, and, if not obstructed, will find it,—enables the poorest man of the present day to do what once demanded the wealth of an empire. The beautiful fragments of the ancient Roman aqueducts, which have survived the ravage of centuries, are often cited to attest the grandeur and power of their builders. To me, they are monuments, not of their power, but of their weakness.
In Thoughts Selected From the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), 231.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Aqueduct (4)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Boy (100)  |  Demand (131)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enable (122)  |  Expenditure (16)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Grandeur (35)  |  High (370)  |  Hydraulic (5)  |  Hydraulics (2)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Incredible (43)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Law (913)  |  Level (69)  |  Man (2252)  |  Money (178)  |  Monument (45)  |  Power (771)  |  Present (630)  |  Rise (169)  |  Roman (39)  |  School (227)  |  Seek (218)  |  Single (365)  |  Stupendous (13)  |  Top (100)  |  Water (503)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Will (2350)

Let us now recapitulate all that has been said, and let us conclude that by hermetically sealing the vials, one is not always sure to prevent the birth of the animals in the infusions, boiled or done at room temperature, if the air inside has not felt the ravages of fire. If, on the contrary, this air has been powerfully heated, it will never allow the animals to be born, unless new air penetrates from outside into the vials. This means that it is indispensable for the production of the animals that they be provided with air which has not felt the action of fire. And as it would not be easy to prove that there were no tiny eggs disseminated and floating in the volume of air that the vials contain, it seems to me that suspicion regarding these eggs continues, and that trial by fire has not entirely done away with fears of their existence in the infusions. The partisans of the theory of ovaries will always have these fears and will not easily suffer anyone's undertaking to demolish them.
Nouvelles Recherches sur les Découvertes Microscopiques, et la Génération des Corps Organisés (1769), 134-5. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 510-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Air (366)  |  Animal (651)  |  Birth (154)  |  Boil (24)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Continue (179)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Demolish (8)  |  Demolition (4)  |  Dissemination (3)  |  Ease (40)  |  Easy (213)  |  Egg (71)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fear (212)  |  Fire (203)  |  Float (31)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hermetic (2)  |  Infusion (4)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Outside (141)  |  Ovary (2)  |  Partisan (5)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Pentration (2)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Prevention (37)  |  Production (190)  |  Proof (304)  |  Prove (261)  |  Provision (17)  |  Recapitulation (6)  |  Seal (19)  |  Suffer (43)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Trial (59)  |  Undertaking (17)  |  Vial (4)  |  Will (2350)

No video, no photographs, no verbal descriptions, no lectures can provide the enchantment that a few minutes out-of-doors can: watch a spider construct a web; observe a caterpillar systematically ravaging the edge of a leaf; close your eyes, cup your hands behind your ears, and listen to aspen leaves rustle or a stream muse about its pools and eddies. Nothing can replace plucking a cluster of pine needles and rolling them in your fingers to feel how they’re put together, or discovering that “sedges have edges and grasses are round,” The firsthand, right-and-left-brain experience of being in the out-of-doors involves all the senses including some we’ve forgotten about, like smelling water a mile away. No teacher, no student, can help but sense and absorb the larger ecological rhythms at work here, and the intertwining of intricate, varied and complex strands that characterize a rich, healthy natural world.
Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Teaching
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Aspen (2)  |  Behind (139)  |  Being (1276)  |  Brain (281)  |  Caterpillar (5)  |  Characterize (22)  |  Close (77)  |  Cluster (16)  |  Complex (202)  |  Construct (129)  |  Cup (7)  |  Description (89)  |  Discover (571)  |  Door (94)  |  Ear (69)  |  Ecological (7)  |  Eddy (4)  |  Edge (51)  |  Enchantment (9)  |  Experience (494)  |  Eye (440)  |  Feel (371)  |  Finger (48)  |  Firsthand (2)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Grass (49)  |  Hand (149)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Help (116)  |  Include (93)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Involve (93)  |  Large (398)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Leave (138)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Listen (81)  |  Mile (43)  |  Minute (129)  |  Muse (10)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural World (33)  |  Needle (7)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observe (179)  |  Photograph (23)  |  Pine (12)  |  Pluck (5)  |  Pool (16)  |  Provide (79)  |  Replace (32)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Rich (66)  |  Right (473)  |  Roll (41)  |  Round (26)  |  Rustle (2)  |  Sedge (2)  |  Sense (785)  |  Smell (29)  |  Spider (14)  |  Strand (9)  |  Stream (83)  |  Student (317)  |  Systematically (7)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Together (392)  |  Vary (27)  |  Verbal (10)  |  Video (2)  |  Watch (118)  |  Water (503)  |  Web (17)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established between her organized and her inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action. When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and–except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface–the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call “the historical period,” they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted for human use, except through great geological changes, or other mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.
Man and Nature, (1864), 42-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Africa (38)  |  Art (680)  |  Assemblage (17)  |  Balance (82)  |  Balance Of Nature (7)  |  Barbarism (8)  |  Barren (33)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Best (467)  |  Brief (37)  |  Call (781)  |  Cause (561)  |  Change (639)  |  Complete (209)  |  Condition (362)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Control (182)  |  Creation (350)  |  Crime (39)  |  Degradation (18)  |  Deluge (14)  |  Destined (42)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Dry (65)  |  Dust (68)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Era (51)  |  Excess (23)  |  Extend (129)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Face (214)  |  Favor (69)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Field (378)  |  Force (497)  |  Forest (161)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  Historical (70)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Impoverished (3)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Low (86)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meadow (21)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Mold (37)  |  Moon (252)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Operation (221)  |  Organic (161)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Present (630)  |  Productivity (23)  |  Prospective (7)  |  Province (37)  |  Rain (70)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Regular (48)  |  Reservoir (9)  |  Return (133)  |  Rock (176)  |  Season (47)  |  Set (400)  |  Shattered (8)  |  Space (523)  |  Species (435)  |  Surface (223)  |  Tend (124)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Use (771)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Verdant (3)  |  Wash (23)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wood (97)

Who would be a better source of information about the forests than aborigines themselves because they have lived off the forest for most of their lives. The forests have provided the aborigines with food, medicine and shelter among other things and yet, the aborigines have never abused or ravaged the forest the way others have.
Keynote address yesterday at the 21st IUFRO World Congress (International Union of Forestry Research Organisations), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As quoted in Lee Shi-lan 'Utilise Knowledge of Aborigines for the Conservation of Forests', New Straits Times (14 Aug 2000), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Aborigine (2)  |  Abuse (25)  |  Better (493)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Food (213)  |  Forest (161)  |  Information (173)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Provide (79)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Shelter (23)  |  Source (101)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Way (1214)


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.