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Gérard de Nerval
(22 May 1808 - 25 Jan 1855)
French writer and poet who was and early romantic and one of first French Symbolists and Surrealists, producing books, short stories, verse, biographical sketches and plays. He travelled around Europe and wrote a travelogue. He died by suicide following years of mental illness.
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Science Quotes by Gérard de Nerval (2 quotes)
Nothing is indifferent, nothing is powerless in the universe; an atom might destroy everything, an atom might save everything!
— Gérard de Nerval
In Aurélia ou Le Rêve et la vie (1855).
Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ... or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. ... Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark.
[By walking a lobster at the end of a blue silk ribbon in the gardens of the Palais-Royal, he mocked middle-class pretensions, but caused concern for his sanity.]
[By walking a lobster at the end of a blue silk ribbon in the gardens of the Palais-Royal, he mocked middle-class pretensions, but caused concern for his sanity.]
— Gérard de Nerval
Quoted by his friend, Théophile Gautier, in Portraits et souvenirs littéraires (1875). In Théophile Gautier, My Fantoms, translated by Richard Holmes (1976), 150.
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) -- 
