Actor Quotes (6 quotes)
Die Welt der chemischen Vorgδnge gleicht einer Bόhne, auf welcher sich in unablδssiger Aufeinanderfolge Scene um Scene abspielt. Die handelnden Personen auf ihr sind die Elemente.
The world of chemical reactions is like a stage, on which scene after scene is ceaselessly played. The actors on it are the elements.
The world of chemical reactions is like a stage, on which scene after scene is ceaselessly played. The actors on it are the elements.
Original German quote in Mary Elvira Weeks, The Discovery of the Elements (1934), 2, citing Winkler, 'Ueber die Entdeckung neuer Elemente im Verlaufe der letzten fόnfundzwanzig Jahre," Ber. (Jan 1897), 30, 13. Translation in Mary Elvira Weeks and Henry M. Leicester (ed.)The Discovery of the Elements (6th ed. 1956), 3.
Everyone is aware of the difficult and menacing situation in which human societyshrunk into one community with a common fatenow finds itself, but only a few act accordingly. Most people go on living their every-day life: half frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragicomedy which is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world. But on that stage, on which the actors under the floodlights play their ordained parts, our fate of tomorrow, life or death of the nations, is being decided.
...
Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest (1611), IV, i.
The fame of surgeons resembles the fame of actors, who live only during their lifetime and whose talent is no longer appreciable once they have disappeared.
The Atheist's Mass. In Wallace Fowlie (ed.), French Stories (1990), 47.
Whoever limits his exertions to the gratification of others, whether by personal exhibition, as in the case of the actor and of the mimic, or by those kinds of literary composition which are calculated for no end but to please or to entertain, renders himself, in some measure, dependent on their caprices and humours. The diversity among men, in their judgments concerning the objects of taste, is incomparably greater than in their speculative conclusions; and accordingly, a mathematician will publish to the world a geometrical demonstration, or a philosopher, a process of abstract reasoning, with a confidence very different from what a poet would feel, in communicating one of his productions even to a friend.
In Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1827), Vol. 3, Chap. 1, Sec. 3, 202.
[I]magine you want to know the sex of your unborn child. There are several approaches. You could, for example, do what the late film star ... Cary Grant did before he was an actor: In a carnival or fair or consulting room, you suspend a watch or a plumb bob above the abdomen of the expectant mother; if it swings left-right it's a boy, and if it swings forward-back it's a girl. The method works one time in two. Of course he was out of there before the baby was born, so he never heard from customers who complained he got it wrong. ... But if you really want to know, then you go to amniocentesis, or to sonograms; and there your chance of being right is 99 out of 100. ... If you really want to know, you go to science.
In 'Wonder and Skepticism', Skeptical Enquirer (Jan-Feb 1995), 19, No. 1.
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) -- 
