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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index W > Category: Winter

Winter Quotes (46 quotes)

[Boundless curiosity.] That’s what being alive is about. I mean, it’s the fun of it all, making sense of it, understanding it. There’s a great pleasure in knowing why trees shed their leaves in winter. Everybody knows they do, but why? If you lose that, then you’ve lost pleasure.
From interview with Sophie Elmhirst, 'I Think the BBC Has Strayed From the Straight and Narrow', New Statesman (10 Jan 2011), 140, No. 5035, 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Being (1276)  |  Boundless (28)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Do (1905)  |  Everybody (72)  |  Fun (42)  |  Great (1610)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Lose (165)  |  Making (300)  |  Mean (810)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Sense (785)  |  Shed (6)  |  Tree (269)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Why (491)

A short, broad man of tremendous vitality, the physical type of Hereward, the last of the English, and his brother-in-arms, Winter, Sylvester’s capacious head was ever lost in the highest cloud-lands of pure mathematics. Often in the dead of night he would get his favorite pupil, that he might communicate the very last product of his creative thought. Everything he saw suggested to him something new in the higher algebra. This transmutation of everything into new mathematics was a revelation to those who knew him intimately. They began to do it themselves. His ease and fertility of invention proved a constant encouragement, while his contempt for provincial stupidities, such as the American hieroglyphics for π and e, which have even found their way into Webster’s Dictionary, made each young worker apply to himself the strictest tests.
In Florian Cajori, Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890), 265.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  American (56)  |  Apply (170)  |  Arm (82)  |  Arms (37)  |  Broad (28)  |  Brother (47)  |  Capacious (2)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Constant (148)  |  Contempt (20)  |  Creative (144)  |  Dead (65)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ease (40)  |  Encouragement (27)  |  English (35)  |  Everything (489)  |  Favorite (37)  |  Fertility (23)  |  Head (87)  |  Hieroglyphic (6)  |  High (370)  |  Himself (461)  |  Invention (400)  |  Last (425)  |  Lost (34)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  New (1273)  |  Night (133)  |  Often (109)  |  Physical (518)  |  Pi (14)  |  Product (166)  |  Provincial (2)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Saw (160)  |  Short (200)  |  Something (718)  |  Strict (20)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Test (221)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Tremendous (29)  |  Type (171)  |  Vitality (24)  |  Way (1214)  |  Worker (34)  |  Young (253)

Animals generally seem naturally disposed to … intercourse at about the same period of the year, and that is when winter is changing into summer…. In the human species, the male experiences more under sexual excitement in winter, and the female in summer.
Aristotle
In The Works of Aristotle: Historia Animalium (350 BC), (The History of Animals), Book V, Part 8, 542a20 translated in William David Ross and John Alexander Smith (eds.), D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (trans.), (1910), Vol. 4, 27-28
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Change (639)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Experience (494)  |  Female (50)  |  Human (1512)  |  Intercourse (5)  |  Male (26)  |  More (2558)  |  Period (200)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Sexual (27)  |  Sexuality (11)  |  Species (435)  |  Summer (56)  |  Year (963)

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...
In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), Cantos 56-57. Collected in Alfred Tennyson and William James Rolfe (ed.) The Poetic and Dramatic works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1898), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Care (203)  |  Claw (8)  |  Cliff (22)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creed (28)  |  Cry (30)  |  Dream (222)  |  Evil (122)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fairness (2)  |  Final (121)  |  Fruitless (9)  |  God (776)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Prayer (30)  |  Psalm (3)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Ravine (5)  |  Red (38)  |  Roll (41)  |  Rolling (4)  |  Scarp (2)  |  Shriek (4)  |  Single (365)  |  Sky (174)  |  Splendid (23)  |  Stone (168)  |  Strife (9)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Trust (72)  |  Type (171)  |  Work (1402)

Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker then that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom.
From An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1937, 1943), 19. Collected in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (2009), 63.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Animal (651)  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Black (46)  |  Blood (144)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Conception (160)  |  Consider (428)  |  Elephant (35)  |  Female (50)  |  Fewer (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Insomnia (3)  |  Majority (68)  |  Male (26)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Measles (4)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  North (12)  |  Oil (67)  |  Paragon (4)  |  People (1031)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Pig (8)  |  Reputation (33)  |  Rub (4)  |  Salt (48)  |  Say (989)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  Spite (55)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Tell (344)  |  Warm (74)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wind (141)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Woman (160)  |  Young (253)

As usual, the author in his thorough, unobjective fashion has marshalled up all the good, indifferent and bad arguments ... I offer the following detailed comments ... though I realize that many of them will arouse him to a vigorous, if not violent rebuttal. In order to preserve the pH of Dr. Brown's digestive system I would not require a rebuttal as a condition of publication...
With heartiest greetings of the season to you and yours! Jack Roberts
PS The above comments should (help) to reduce your winter heating bill!
Jack Roberts' referee's report on Herbert Charles Brown's paper with Rachel Kornblum on the role of steric strain in carbonium ion reactions.
As quoted by D. A. Davenport, in 'On the Comparative Unimportance of the Invective Effect', Chemtech (Sep 1987), 17, 530.
Science quotes on:  |  Argument (145)  |  Author (175)  |  Bad (185)  |  Brown (23)  |  Condition (362)  |  Detail (150)  |  Good (906)  |  Greeting (10)  |  Ion (21)  |  Offer (142)  |  Order (638)  |  Paper (192)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Publication (102)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Realize (157)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Referee (8)  |  Require (229)  |  Role (86)  |  Season (47)  |  System (545)  |  Thorough (40)  |  Will (2350)

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
In 'An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change', The Sunday Times (11 Feb 2007).
Science quotes on:  |  Antarctica (8)  |  Arctic (10)  |  Arrival (15)  |  Billion (104)  |  Bird (163)  |  Business (156)  |  California (9)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Crop (26)  |  Early (196)  |  Ensure (27)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Frost (15)  |  Global (39)  |  Headline (8)  |  Ice (58)  |  Iceberg (4)  |  Loss (117)  |  Migration (12)  |  Nest (26)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Penguin (4)  |  Recent (78)  |  Sea (326)  |  Spring (140)  |  Symptom (38)  |  Tell (344)  |  Unusual (37)  |  Warming (24)  |  Year (963)

For the time of making Observations none can ever be amiss; there being no season, nor indeed hardly any place where in some Natural Thing or other does not present it self worthy of Remark: yea there are some things that require Observation all the Year round, as Springs, Rivers, &c. Nor is there any Season amiss for the gathering Natural Things. Bodies of one kind or other presenting themselves at all times, and in Winter as well as Summer.
In Brief Instructions for Making Observations in all Parts of the World (1696), 10-11.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Kind (564)  |  Making (300)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Observation (593)  |  Other (2233)  |  Present (630)  |  Require (229)  |  River (140)  |  Season (47)  |  Self (268)  |  Spring (140)  |  Summer (56)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Year (963)

Global nuclear war could have a major impact on climate—manifested by significant surface darkening over many weeks, subfreezing land temperatures persisting for up to several months, large perturbations in global circulation patterns, and dramatic changes in local weather and precipitation rates—a harsh “nuclear winter” in any season. [Co-author with Carl Sagan]
In 'Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions', Science (1983), 222, 1290.
Science quotes on:  |  Author (175)  |  Change (639)  |  Circulation (27)  |  Climate (102)  |  Climate Change (76)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Global (39)  |  Harsh (9)  |  Impact (45)  |  Large (398)  |  Major (88)  |  Month (91)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Winter (3)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Persisting (2)  |  Perturbation (7)  |  Precipitation (7)  |  Carl Sagan (120)  |  Season (47)  |  Significant (78)  |  Surface (223)  |  Temperature (82)  |  War (233)  |  Weather (49)  |  Week (73)

HIBERNATE, v. i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it has to try twice before it can cast a shadow. 
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary,  137.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Bear (162)  |  Cast (69)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Hibernation (3)  |  Humour (116)  |  Notion (120)  |  Pass (241)  |  Retirement (8)  |  Season (47)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Singular (24)  |  Spring (140)  |  Try (296)  |  Various (205)  |  Whole (756)

I always love geology. In winter, particularly, it is pleasant to listen to theories about the great mountains one visited in the summer; or about the Flood or volcanoes; about great catastrophes or about blisters; above all about fossils … Everywhere there are hypotheses, but nowhere truths; many workmen, but no experts; priests, but no God. In these circumstances each man can bring his hypothesis like a candle to a burning altar, and on seeing his candle lit declare ‘Smoke for smoke, sir, mine is better than yours’. It is precisely for this reason that I love geology.
In Nouvelles Genevoises (1910), 306. First edition, 1841.
Science quotes on:  |  Altar (11)  |  Better (493)  |  Blister (2)  |  Bring (95)  |  Burning (49)  |  Candle (32)  |  Catastrophe (35)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Declare (48)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Expert (67)  |  Flood (52)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Geology (240)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Light (635)  |  Listen (81)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mine (78)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Particularly (21)  |  Pleasant (22)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Priest (29)  |  Reason (766)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Summer (56)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Visit (27)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Workman (13)

I am giving this winter two courses of lectures to three students, of which one is only moderately prepared, the other less than moderately, and the third lacks both preparation and ability. Such are the onera of a mathematical profession.
Letter to Friedrich Bessel (4 Dec 1808). In Gauss-Bessel Briefwechsel (1880), 107. In Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath's Quotation-book (1914), 158.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Both (496)  |  Course (413)  |  Education (423)  |  Lack (127)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Other (2233)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Profession (108)  |  Student (317)  |  Two (936)

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York … a city neighborhood that included houses, lampposts, walls, and bushes. But with an early bedtime in the winter, I could look out my window and see the stars, and the stars were not like anything else in my neighborhood. [At age 5] I didn’t know what they were.
[At age 9] my mother … said to me, “You have a library card now, and you know how to read. Take the streetcar to the library and get a book on stars.” … I stepped up to the big librarian and asked for a book on stars. … I sat down and found out the answer, which was something really stunning.
I found out that the stars are glowing balls of gas. I also found out that the Sun is a star but really close and that the stars are all suns except really far away I didn’t know any physics or mathematics at that time, but I could imagine how far you’d have to move the Sun away from us till it was only as bright as a star. It was in that library, reading that book, that the scale of the universe opened up to me. There was something beautiful about it.
At that young age, I already knew that I’d be very happy if I could devote my life to finding out more about the stars and the planets that go around them. And it’s been my great good fortune to do just that.
Quoted in interview with Jack Rightmyer, in 'Stars in His Eyes', Highlights For Children (1 Jan 1997). Ages as given in Tom Head (ed.), Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006), x.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Already (226)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Ball (64)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Biography (254)  |  Book (413)  |  Bright (81)  |  Brooklyn (3)  |  Career (86)  |  Child (333)  |  City (87)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Early (196)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Gas (89)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Happy (108)  |  House (143)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Know (1538)  |  Library (53)  |  Life (1870)  |  Look (584)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Mother (116)  |  Move (223)  |  Neighborhood (12)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Planet (402)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Scale (122)  |  See (1094)  |  Something (718)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sun (407)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wall (71)  |  Window (59)  |  Young (253)

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep—great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth’s magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.
Opening remark, Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1952).
Science quotes on:  |  Delicate (45)  |  Delight (111)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Eye (440)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Great (1610)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Magnetic (44)  |  Magnetic Field (7)  |  Moment (260)  |  Motion (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Private (29)  |  Proton (23)  |  Remember (189)  |  Reside (25)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Reward (72)  |  Rich (66)  |  See (1094)  |  Snow (39)  |  Something (718)  |  Strange (160)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Wonder (251)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
Letter to Lee McGeorge (31 Jul 1978). Collected in Letters of Note: Volume 2: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence (2016), 76.
Science quotes on:  |  Baby (29)  |  Blood (144)  |  Chip (4)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Coin (13)  |  Color (155)  |  Feather (13)  |  Flood (52)  |  Forest (161)  |  Gold (101)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Honey (15)  |  Ice (58)  |  Land (131)  |  Light (635)  |  Moon (252)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nest (26)  |  New (1273)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Orange (15)  |  Rise (169)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Slip (6)  |  Sunrise (14)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Swan (3)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Vast (188)  |  White (132)

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. When visiting the U.S. from Germany for a winter academic stay.
From interview aboard the liner Belgenland (Dec 1930).
Science quotes on:  |  Enough (341)  |  Future (467)  |  Never (1089)  |  Soon (187)  |  Think (1122)

I was then in Germany, where I had been drafted because of the wars that are still going on there, and as I was returning to the army from the emperor's coronation, the arrival of winter delayed me in quarters where, finding no company to distract me and, luckily, having no cares or passions to trouble me, I used to spend the whole day alone in a room, that was heated by a stove, where I had plenty of time to concentrate on my own thoughts.
Discourse on Method in Discourse, on Method and Related Writings (1637), trans. Desmond M. Clarke, Penguin edition (1999), Part 2, 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Army (35)  |  Arrival (15)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Care (203)  |  Company (63)  |  Concentrate (28)  |  Delay (21)  |  Heat (180)  |  Passion (121)  |  Spend (97)  |  Still (614)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trouble (117)  |  War (233)  |  Whole (756)

If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.
[co-author with American atmospheric chemist Richard P. Turco (1943- )]
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race (1990), 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Author (175)  |  Blanket (10)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Effect (414)  |  Greenhouse (2)  |  Greenhouse Effect (5)  |  Kick (11)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Winter (3)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Warm (74)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Wrap (7)

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
In 'Proverbs', The Poems: With Specimens of the Prose Writings of William Blake (1885), 279.
Science quotes on:  |  Enjoy (48)  |  Harvest (28)  |  Learn (672)  |  Seed (97)  |  Teach (299)  |  Time (1911)

In Winter, [the Antarctic] is perhaps the dreariest of places. Our base, Little America, lay in a bowl of ice, near the edge of the Ross Ice Barrier. The temperature fell as low as 72 degrees below zero. One could actually hear one's breath freeze.
In 'Hoover Presents Special Medal to Byrd...', New York Times (21 Jun 1930), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Antarctic (7)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Base (120)  |  Bowl (4)  |  Breath (61)  |  Coldness (2)  |  Degree (277)  |  Dreariness (3)  |  Edge (51)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Hear (144)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Ice (58)  |  Little (717)  |  Low (86)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Zero (38)

July 11, 1656. Came home by Greenwich ferry, where I saw Sir J. Winter’s project of charring sea-coal to burn out the sulphur and render it sweet [coke]. He did it by burning the coals in such earthen pots as the glassmen melt their metal, so firing them without consuming them, using a bar of iron in each crucible, or pot, which bar has a hook at one end, that so the coals being melted in a furnace with other crude sea-coals under them, may be drawn out of the pots sticking to the iron, whence they are beaten off in great half-exhausted cinders, which being rekindled make a clear pleasant chamber-fire deprived of their sulphur and arsenic malignity. What success it may have, time will discover.
Science quotes on:  |  Arsenic (10)  |  Being (1276)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Cinder (6)  |  Coal (64)  |  Coke (4)  |  Crucible (8)  |  Crude (32)  |  Discover (571)  |  End (603)  |  Fire (203)  |  Furnace (13)  |  Great (1610)  |  Home (184)  |  Iron (99)  |  Metal (88)  |  Mineralogy (24)  |  Other (2233)  |  Project (77)  |  Render (96)  |  Saw (160)  |  Sea (326)  |  Success (327)  |  Sulphur (19)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)

Just after sundown I see a large flock of wild geese in a perfect harrow cleaving their way toward the northeast, with Napoleonic tactics splitting the forces of winter.
(31 Mar 1858). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: X: August 8, 1857-June 29, 1858 (1906), 336.
Science quotes on:  |  Cleave (2)  |  Flock (4)  |  Force (497)  |  Goose (13)  |  Large (398)  |  Ornithology (21)  |  Perfect (223)  |  See (1094)  |  Split (15)  |  Sundown (2)  |  Tactic (9)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wild (96)

Let Nature do your bottling and your pickling and preserving. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick. Men have discovered—or think they have discovered—the salutariness of a few wild things only, and not of all nature. Why, “nature” is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health. Some men think that they are not well in spring, or summer, or autumn, or winter; it is only because they are not well in them.
(23 Aug 1853). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: V: March 5-November 30, 1853 (1906), 395.
Science quotes on:  |  Autumn (11)  |  Best (467)  |  Bottle (17)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  End (603)  |  Exist (458)  |  Health (210)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Moment (260)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pickle (3)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Preserving (18)  |  Resist (15)  |  Salutary (5)  |  Season (47)  |  Sick (83)  |  Spring (140)  |  State (505)  |  Summer (56)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Why (491)  |  Wild (96)

My father’s collection of fossils was practically unnamed, but the appearance of Phillips’ book [Geology of the Yorkshire Coast], in which most of our specimens were figured, enabled us to remedy this defect. Every evening was devoted by us to accomplishing the work. This was my first introduction to true scientific study. … Phillips’ accurate volume initiated an entirely new order of things. Many a time did I mourn over the publication of this book, and the consequences immediately resulting from it. Instead of indulging in the games and idleness to which most lads are prone, my evenings throughout a long winter were devoted to the detested labour of naming these miserable stones. Such is the short-sightedness of boyhood. Pursuing this uncongenial work gave me in my thirteenth year a thorough practical familiarity with the palaeontological treasures of Eastern Yorkshire. This early acquisition happily moulded the entire course of my future life.
In Reminiscences of a Yorkshire naturalist (1896), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Accurate (88)  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Book (413)  |  Boyhood (4)  |  Coast (13)  |  Collection (68)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Course (413)  |  Defect (31)  |  Detest (5)  |  Devote (45)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Early (196)  |  Evening (12)  |  Familiarity (21)  |  Father (113)  |  First (1302)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Future (467)  |  Game (104)  |  Geology (240)  |  Idleness (15)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Indulge (15)  |  Introduction (37)  |  Labor (200)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Miserable (8)  |  Mold (37)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mourn (3)  |  New (1273)  |  Order (638)  |  Paleontology (32)  |  John Phillips (2)  |  Practical (225)  |  Publication (102)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Short (200)  |  Specimen (32)  |  Stone (168)  |  Study (701)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thorough (40)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Treasure (59)  |  True (239)  |  Uncongenial (2)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)  |  Yorkshire (2)

Nature vibrates with rhythms, climatic and diastrophic, those finding stratigraphic expression ranging in period from the rapid oscillation of surface waters, recorded in ripple-mark, to those long-deferred stirrings of the deep imprisoned titans which have divided earth history into periods and eras. The flight of time is measured by the weaving of composite rhythms- day and night, calm and storm, summer and winter, birth and death such as these are sensed in the brief life of man. But the career of the earth recedes into a remoteness against which these lesser cycles are as unavailing for the measurement of that abyss of time as would be for human history the beating of an insect's wing. We must seek out, then, the nature of those longer rhythms whose very existence was unknown until man by the light of science sought to understand the earth. The larger of these must be measured in terms of the smaller, and the smaller must be measured in terms of years.
'Rhythm and the Measurement of Geologic Time', Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 1917, 28,746.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Against (332)  |  Birth (154)  |  Brief (37)  |  Calm (32)  |  Career (86)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Death (406)  |  Deep (241)  |  Divided (50)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Era (51)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expression (181)  |  Flight (101)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imprison (11)  |  Insect (89)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Oscillation (13)  |  Period (200)  |  Recede (11)  |  Record (161)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Ripple (12)  |  Seek (218)  |  Storm (56)  |  Summer (56)  |  Surface (223)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vibrate (7)  |  Water (503)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Wing (79)  |  Year (963)

Artificial Intelligence quote: One wintry night, dozing by firelight
One wintry night, dozing by firelight,
Kekulé dreamt of snakes curling tight,
  With whirl and twist,
  In a scholarly tryst,
Carbon’s ring structure burst clearly in sight.
Limerick co-written by Artificial Intelligence and Ian Ellis.
Science quotes on:  |  Burst (41)  |  Carbon (68)  |  Clearly (45)  |  Curl (4)  |  Dream (222)  |  August Kekulé (14)  |  Night (133)  |  Ring (18)  |  Scholarly (2)  |  Sight (135)  |  Snake (29)  |  Structure (365)  |  Tight (4)  |  Twist (10)  |  Whirl (10)

Since Britain lies far north toward the pole, the nights are short in summer, and at midnight it is hard to tell whether the evening twilight still lingers or whether dawn is approaching, since the sun at night passes not far below the earth in its journey round the north back to the east. Consequently the days are long in summer, as are the nights in winter when the sun withdraws into African regions.
Bede
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  African (11)  |  Back (395)  |  Britain (26)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Hard (246)  |  Journey (48)  |  Lie (370)  |  Linger (14)  |  Long (778)  |  Midnight (12)  |  Night (133)  |  North (12)  |  Pole (49)  |  Short (200)  |  Still (614)  |  Summer (56)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tell (344)  |  Twilight (6)  |  Withdraw (11)

The cause of rain is now, I consider, no longer an object of doubt. If two masses of air of unequal temperatures, by the ordinary currents of the winds, are intermixed, when saturated with vapour, a precipitation ensues. If the masses are under saturation, then less precipitation takes place, or none at all, according to the degree. Also, the warmer the air, the greater is the quantity of vapour precipitated in like circumstances. ... Hence the reason why rains are heavier in summer than in winter, and in warm countries than in cold.
Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester (1819), 3, 507. Quoted in George Drysdale Dempsey and Daniel Kinnear Clark, On the Drainage of Lands, Towns, & Buildings (1887), 246.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Air (366)  |  Cause (561)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Cold (115)  |  Consider (428)  |  Current (122)  |  Degree (277)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Greater (288)  |  Intermix (3)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Object (438)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Precipitation (7)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Rain (70)  |  Reason (766)  |  Saturation (9)  |  Summer (56)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Two (936)  |  Unequal (12)  |  Vapour (16)  |  Warm (74)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Why (491)  |  Wind (141)

The day dawned grey and dreary
The sky made of silver
While the first snowflakes
Began to fall.
A lone bird chirped
In a tree bare of its leaves.
Standing on a lonely road
I stood watching as the world
Started changing.
And I embraced the winter
With memories of summer’s warmth
Still in my heart.
And soon the snowflakes
Began to dance about me
And I twirled around and around
As everything
Turned into a winter wonderland.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bare (33)  |  Begin (275)  |  Bird (163)  |  Change (639)  |  Dance (35)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Dreary (6)  |  Embrace (47)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fall (243)  |  First (1302)  |  Grey (10)  |  Heart (243)  |  Leave (138)  |  Lone (3)  |  Lonely (24)  |  Memory (144)  |  Road (71)  |  Silver (49)  |  Sky (174)  |  Snowflake (15)  |  Soon (187)  |  Stand (284)  |  Start (237)  |  Still (614)  |  Summer (56)  |  Tree (269)  |  Turn (454)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Watch (118)  |  World (1850)

The dog writhing in the gutter, its back broken by a passing car, knows what it is to be alive. So too with the aged elk of the far north woods, slowly dying in the bitter cold of winter. The asphalt upon which the dog lies knows no pain. The snow upon which the elk has collapsed knows not the cold. But living beings do. … Are you conscious? Then you can feel more pain. … Perhaps we even suffer more than the dumb animals.
In The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos (1988), 194-195. As quoted and cited in Robert E. Zinser, The Fascinated God: What Science Says to Faith and Faith to Scientists (2003), 521.
Science quotes on:  |  Alive (97)  |  Animal (651)  |  Asphalt (2)  |  Back (395)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Broken (56)  |  Car (75)  |  Cold (115)  |  Collapse (19)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Die (94)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Dumb (11)  |  Feel (371)  |  Gutter (3)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  More (2558)  |  Pain (144)  |  Passing (76)  |  Slowly (19)  |  Snow (39)  |  Suffer (43)  |  Wood (97)  |  Writhe (3)

The Earth would only have to move a few million kilometers sunward—or starward—for the delicate balance of climate to be destroyed. The Antarctic icecap would melt and flood all low-lying land; or the oceans would freeze and the whole world would be locked in eternal winter. Just a nudge in either direction would be enough.
In Rendezvous With Rama (1973), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Antarctic (7)  |  Balance (82)  |  Climate (102)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Direction (185)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enough (341)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Flood (52)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Kilometer (10)  |  Land (131)  |  Lock (14)  |  Low (86)  |  Lying (55)  |  Melting (6)  |  Million (124)  |  Move (223)  |  Nudge (2)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Sunward (2)  |  Whole (756)  |  Whole World (29)  |  World (1850)

The laboratory was an unattractive half basement and low ceilinged room with an inner dark room for the galvanometer and experimental animals. It was dark, crowded with equipment and uninviting. Into it came patients for electrocardiography, dogs for experiments, trays with coffee and buns for lunch. It was hot and dusty in summer and cold in winter. True a large fire burnt brightly in the winter but anyone who found time to warm his backside at it was not beloved by [Sir Thomas] Lewis. It was no good to try and look out of the window for relaxation, for it was glazed with opaque glass. The scientific peaks were our only scenery, and it was our job to try and find the pathways to the top.
'Tribute to Sir Thomas Lewis', University College Hospital Magazine (1955), 40, 71.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Basement (4)  |  Coffee (21)  |  Cold (115)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dog (70)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fire (203)  |  Galvanometer (4)  |  Glass (94)  |  Good (906)  |  Hot (63)  |  Inner (72)  |  Job (86)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Large (398)  |  Sir Thomas Lewis (2)  |  Look (584)  |  Low (86)  |  Lunch (6)  |  Opaque (7)  |  Pathway (15)  |  Patient (209)  |  Peak (20)  |  Scenery (9)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Summer (56)  |  Time (1911)  |  Top (100)  |  Try (296)  |  Warm (74)  |  Window (59)

The long summer was over. For ages a tropical climate had prevailed over a great part of the earth, and animals whose home is now beneath the Equator roamed over the world from the far South to the very borders of the Arctics ... But their reign was over. A sudden intense winter, that was also to last for ages, fell upon our globe.
Geological Sketches (1866), 208.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Animal (651)  |  Arctic (10)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Climate (102)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Equator (6)  |  Great (1610)  |  Home (184)  |  Ice Age (10)  |  Last (425)  |  Long (778)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Reign (24)  |  South (39)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Summer (56)  |  World (1850)

The means by which I preserve my own health are, temperance, early rising, and spunging the body every morning with cold water, a practice I have pursued for thirty years ; and though I go from this heated theatre into the squares of the Hospital, in the severest winter nights, with merely silk stockings on my legs, yet I scarcely ever have a cold...
'Lecture 3, Treatment of Inflammation', The Lectures of Sir Astley Cooper (1825), Vol. 1, 58.Lectures on surgery, Lect. 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (254)  |  Body (557)  |  Cold (115)  |  Early (196)  |  Health (210)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hospital (45)  |  Leg (35)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Merely (315)  |  Morning (98)  |  Physician (284)  |  Practice (212)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Rising (44)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Silk (14)  |  Square (73)  |  Water (503)  |  Year (963)

The old Sussex tortoise, that I have mentioned to you so often, is become my property. I dug it out of its winter dormitory in March last, when it was enough awakened to express its resentments by hissing; and, packing it in a box with earth, carried it eighty miles in post-chaises. The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden; however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried it-self in the loose mound, and continues still concealed … When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers.
In Letter to Daines Barrington, (21 Apr 1780) in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), 357.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bestow (18)  |  Box (22)  |  Cold (115)  |  Concealed (25)  |  Continue (179)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enough (341)  |  Existence (481)  |  Express (192)  |  Find (1014)  |  Garden (64)  |  Hibernation (3)  |  Hurry (16)  |  Journey (48)  |  Last (425)  |  Little (717)  |  Longevity (6)  |  March (48)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mention (84)  |  Month (91)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Property (177)  |  Providence (19)  |  Relish (4)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Self (268)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Slumber (6)  |  State (505)  |  Still (614)  |  Strange (160)  |  Stupor (2)  |  Together (392)  |  Tortoise (10)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Walk (138)  |  Waste (109)  |  Weather (49)  |  Wonder (251)

The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics. (The problem does not lend itself to full experimental verification—at least not more than once.)[co-author with American atmospheric chemist Richard P. Turco (1943- )]
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race (1990), 26.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Author (175)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Course (413)  |  Direct (228)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Global (39)  |  Governing (20)  |  Investigation (250)  |  More (2558)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Winter (3)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Problem (731)  |  Verification (32)  |  War (233)

The School of Physics could give us no suitable premises, but for lack of anything better, the Director permitted us to use an abandoned shed which had been in service as a dissecting room of the School of Medicine. Its glass roof did not afford complete shelter against rain; the heat was suffocating in summer, and the bitter cold of winter was only a little lessened by the iron stove, except in its immediate vicinity. There was no question of obtaining the needed proper apparatus in common use by chemists. We simply had some old pine-wood tables with furnaces and gas burners. We had to use the adjoining yard for those of our chemical operations that involved producing irritating gases; even then the gas often filled our shed. With this equipment we entered on our exhausting work. Yet it was in this miserable old shed that we passed the best and happiest years of our life.
As translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg in Marie Curie, 'Autobiographical Notes', Pierre Curie (1923), 186. [With her husband, Pierre Curie, it was in this poorly equipped facility that they worked on their discovery of polonium (announced Jul 1898) and radium (announced Dec 1898). —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Cold (115)  |  Dissection (35)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Furnace (13)  |  Happy (108)  |  Heat (180)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Rain (70)  |  Room (42)  |  Shed (6)  |  Stove (3)  |  Summer (56)  |  Work (1402)  |  Yard (10)

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. ... Great inventions like hay and printing, whatever their immediate social costs may be, result in a permanent expansion of our horizons, a lasting acquisition of new territory for human bodies and minds to cultivate.
Infinite In All Directions (1988, 2004), 135. The book is a revised version of a series of the Gifford Lectures under the title 'In Praise of Diversity', given at Aberdeen, Scotland.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Age (509)  |  Agriculture (78)  |  Alive (97)  |  Alp (9)  |  Alps (9)  |  Animal (651)  |  Autumn (11)  |  Berlin (10)  |  Call (781)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Climate (102)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Cost (94)  |  Cow (42)  |  Cultivation (36)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dark Ages (10)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enough (341)  |  Europe (50)  |  Event (222)  |  Exist (458)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Forest (161)  |  Good (906)  |  Grass (49)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Grow (247)  |  Hay (6)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Horse (78)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Body (34)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Invention (400)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Large (398)  |  Life (1870)  |  London (15)  |  Medieval (12)  |  Mediterranean (9)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moscow (5)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motive (62)  |  New (1273)  |  New York (17)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Other (2233)  |  Oxen (8)  |  Paris (11)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Population (115)  |  Power (771)  |  Printing (25)  |  Profound (105)  |  Result (700)  |  Roman (39)  |  Rome (19)  |  Simple (426)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Social (261)  |  Technology (281)  |  Territory (25)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Urban (12)  |  Usually (176)  |  Western (45)  |  Whatever (234)

The wintry clouds drop spangles on the mountains. If the thing occurred once in a century historians would chronicle and poets would sing of the event; but Nature, prodigal of beauty, rains down her hexagonal ice-stars year by year, forming layers yards in thickness. The summer sun thaws and partially consolidates the mass. Each winter's fall is covered by that of the ensuing one, and thus the snow layer of each year has to sustain an annually augmented weight. It is more and more compacted by the pressure, and ends by being converted into the ice of a true glacier, which stretches its frozen tongue far down beyond the limits of perpetual snow. The glaciers move, and through valleys they move like rivers.
The Glaciers of the Alps & Mountaineering in 1861 (1911), 247.
Science quotes on:  |  Annual (5)  |  Augment (12)  |  Augmentation (4)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Century (319)  |  Chronicle (6)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Compact (13)  |  Consolidation (4)  |  Conversion (17)  |  Cover (40)  |  Down (455)  |  Drop (77)  |  End (603)  |  Ensuing (3)  |  Event (222)  |  Fall (243)  |  Forming (42)  |  Freezing (16)  |  Glacier (17)  |  Hexagon (4)  |  Historian (59)  |  Ice (58)  |  Layer (41)  |  Limit (294)  |  Mass (160)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Move (223)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Partially (8)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Perpetuity (9)  |  Poet (97)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Prodigal (2)  |  Rain (70)  |  River (140)  |  Snow (39)  |  Song (41)  |  Spangle (2)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Summer (56)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Thaw (2)  |  Thickness (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Valley (37)  |  Weight (140)  |  Yard (10)  |  Year (963)

There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
In The Sense of Wonder (1956, 1965), 88-89.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Assurance (17)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Bird (163)  |  Bud (6)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Ebb (4)  |  Flow (89)  |  Fold (9)  |  Heal (7)  |  Healing (28)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Migration (12)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Night (133)  |  Ready (43)  |  Refrain (9)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Something (718)  |  Spring (140)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Tide (37)

To the distracting occupations belong especially my lecture courses which I am holding this winter for the first time, and which now cost much more of my time than I like. Meanwhile I hope that the second time this expenditure of time will be much less, otherwise I would never be able to reconcile myself to it, even practical (astronomical) work must give far more satisfaction than if one brings up to B a couple more mediocre heads which otherwise would have stopped at A.
Letter to Friedrich Bessel (4 Dec 1808). Quoted in G. Waldo Dunnington, Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004), 415.
Science quotes on:  |  Belong (168)  |  Cost (94)  |  Course (413)  |  Education (423)  |  Expenditure (16)  |  First (1302)  |  Hope (321)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Mediocre (14)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Practical (225)  |  Reconcile (19)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.
Quoted, for example, in The American Exporter (1930), Vol. 106, 158. Webmaster has found this quote in numerous texts, but as yet has not identified the original. (Can you help?)
Science quotes on:  |  Bad (185)  |  Big (55)  |  Bring (95)  |  Die (94)  |  Dream (222)  |  Dreamer (14)  |  Fire (203)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Haze (3)  |  Hope (321)  |  Let (64)  |  Light (635)  |  Long (778)  |  Nourish (18)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Other (2233)  |  Protect (65)  |  Red (38)  |  See (1094)  |  Sincerely (3)  |  Soft (30)  |  Spring (140)  |  Sunshine (12)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  True (239)  |  Will (2350)

We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive... From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences we see fantastic forms stretching in the frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man’s art.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Across (32)  |  Admit (49)  |  Arm (82)  |  Arms (37)  |  Art (680)  |  Awake (19)  |  Broaden (3)  |  Cheer (7)  |  Conceal (19)  |  Concealed (25)  |  Core (20)  |  Cotton (8)  |  Cover (40)  |  Covering (14)  |  Design (203)  |  Dim (11)  |  Down (455)  |  Dusky (4)  |  Enhance (17)  |  Fantastic (21)  |  Fence (11)  |  Field (378)  |  Form (976)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Frost (15)  |  Gambol (2)  |  Hang (46)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Length (24)  |  Lie (370)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Model (106)  |  Morning (98)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Night (133)  |  Pane (2)  |  Private (29)  |  Reality (274)  |  Rear (7)  |  See (1094)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Side (236)  |  Sky (174)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Snow (39)  |  Stand (284)  |  Still (614)  |  Stillness (5)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Strew (3)  |  Tree (269)  |  Wall (71)  |  Warm (74)  |  White (132)  |  Window (59)  |  Yard (10)

We were flying over America and suddenly I saw snow, the first snow we ever saw from orbit. I have never visited America, but I imagined that the arrival of autumn and winter is the same there as in other places, and the process of getting ready for them is the same. And then it struck me that we are all children of our Earth.
As quoted in Kevin W. Kelley (ed.), The Home Planet (1988). Source cited as “submitted by Lev Demin”.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Arrival (15)  |  Autumn (11)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Earth (1076)  |  First (1302)  |  Fly (153)  |  Flying (74)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Never (1089)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Other (2233)  |  Place (192)  |  Process (439)  |  Ready (43)  |  Same (166)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Snow (39)  |  Strike (72)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Visit (27)

When the movement of the comets is considered and we reflect on the laws of gravity, it will be readily perceived that their approach to Earth might there cause the most woeful events, bring back the deluge, or make it perish in a deluge of fire, shatter it into small dust, or at least turn it from its orbit, drive away its Moon, or, still worse, the Earth itself outside the orbit of Saturn, and inflict upon us a winter several centuries long, which neither men nor animals would be able to bear. The tails even of comets would not be unimportant phenomena, if in taking their departure left them in whole or part in our atmosphere
From Cosmologische Briefe über die Einrichtung des Weltbaues (1761). As quoted in Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (1986), 95.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Approach (112)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Back (395)  |  Bear (162)  |  Cause (561)  |  Comet (65)  |  Consider (428)  |  Deluge (14)  |  Dust (68)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Event (222)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flood (52)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Law (913)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moon (252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Movement (162)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Outside (141)  |  Perish (56)  |  Saturn (15)  |  Small (489)  |  Still (614)  |  Turn (454)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

Winter opened its vaults last night, flinging fistfuls of crystalline diamonds into the darkening sky. Like white-tulled ballerinas dancing gracefully on heaven’s stage, silent stars stood entranced by their intricate beauty. Motionless, I watched each lacy gem drift softly by my upturned face, as winter’s icy hands guided them gently on their swirling lazy way, and blanketed the waiting earth in cold splendor. The shivering rustling of reeds, the restless fingers of the trees snapping in the frosty air, broke the silent stillness, as winter quietly pulled up its white coverlet over the sleepy earth.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Ballerina (2)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Blanket (10)  |  Break (109)  |  Cold (115)  |  Crystalline (3)  |  Dance (35)  |  Darken (2)  |  Diamond (21)  |  Drift (14)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Entrance (16)  |  Face (214)  |  Finger (48)  |  Fling (5)  |  Frosty (3)  |  Gem (17)  |  Guide (107)  |  Hand (149)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Icy (3)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Last (425)  |  Lazy (10)  |  Motionless (4)  |  Night (133)  |  Open (277)  |  Pull (43)  |  Quietly (5)  |  Reed (8)  |  Restless (13)  |  Rustle (2)  |  Shiver (2)  |  Silent (31)  |  Sky (174)  |  Snap (7)  |  Softly (6)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Stage (152)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stillness (5)  |  Swirl (10)  |  Tree (269)  |  Vault (2)  |  Wait (66)  |  Waiting (42)  |  Watch (118)  |  Way (1214)  |  White (132)


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.