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: “I have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their arithmetical magnitude.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Dire

Dire Quotes (6 quotes)

[Describing the effects of over-indulgence in wine:]
But most too passive, when the blood runs low
Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,
And bravely by resisting conquer fate,
Try Circe's arts; and in the tempting bowl
Of poisoned nectar sweet oblivion swill.
Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves
In empty air; Elysium opens round,
A pleasing frenzy buoys the lightened soul,
And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;
And what was difficult, and what was dire,
Yields to your prowess and superior stars:
The happiest you of all that e'er were mad,
Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.
But soon your heaven is gone: a heavier gloom
Shuts o'er your head; and, as the thundering stream,
Swollen o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook,
So, when the frantic raptures in your breast
Subside, you languish into mortal man;
You sleep, and waking find yourself undone,
For, prodigal of life, in one rash night
You lavished more than might support three days.
A heavy morning comes; your cares return
With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well
May be endured; so may the throbbing head;
But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
Involves you; such a dastardly despair
Unmans your soul, as maddening Pentheus felt,
When, baited round Citheron's cruel sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.
The Art of Preserving Health: a Poem in Four Books (2nd. ed., 1745), Book IV, 108-110.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Art (680)  |  Ascend (30)  |  Bank (31)  |  Blood (144)  |  Care (203)  |  Charm (54)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Cruel (25)  |  Delirium (3)  |  Despair (40)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Dissolve (22)  |  Dream (222)  |  Drunk (10)  |  Effect (414)  |  Empty (82)  |  Fate (76)  |  Find (1014)  |  Folly (44)  |  Frenzy (6)  |  Gloom (11)  |  Headache (5)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Hope (321)  |  Indulgence (6)  |  Involve (93)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Low (86)  |  Mad (54)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Morning (98)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Night (133)  |  Open (277)  |  Pain (144)  |  Poison (46)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Prodigal (2)  |  Rain (70)  |  Rapture (8)  |  Rash (15)  |  Return (133)  |  Run (158)  |  Saw (160)  |  Shut (41)  |  Side (236)  |  Sink (38)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Soon (187)  |  Soul (235)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Stomach (40)  |  Stream (83)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Sun (407)  |  Superior (88)  |  Support (151)  |  Sweet (40)  |  Tempting (10)  |  Try (296)  |  Two (936)  |  Waking (17)  |  Wine (39)  |  Yield (86)

Il ne peut y avoir de langage plus universel et plus simple, plus exempt d’erreurs et d’obscurités, c'est-à-dire plus digne d'exprimer les rapports invariables des êtres naturels.
There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities, … more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things. [About mathematical analysis.]
From Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822), xiv, translated by Alexander Freeman in The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Error (339)  |  Express (192)  |  Free (239)  |  Invariable (6)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Obscurity (28)  |  Plus (43)  |  Relation (166)  |  Simple (426)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Universal (198)  |  Worthy (35)

Les mathématique sont un triple. Elles doivent fournir un instrument pour l'étude de la nature. Mais ce n'est pas tout: elles ont un but philosophique et, j'ose le dire, un but esthétique.
Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.
La valeur de la science. In Anton Bovier, Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems (2006), 161.
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Study (701)

Changes That Have Occurred in the Globe: When we have seen with our own eyes a mountain progressing into a plain; that is to say, an immense boulder separating from this mountain and covering the fields; an entire castle broken into pieces over the ground; a river swallowed up which then bursts out from its abyss; clear marks of a vast amount of water having once flooded regions now inhabited, and a hundred vestiges of other transformations, then we are much more willing to believe that great changes altered the face of the earth, than a Parisian lady who knows only that the place where her house was built was once a cultivated field. However, a lady from Naples who has seen the buried ruins of Herculaneum, is much less subject to the bias which leads us to believe that everything has always been as it is today.
From article 'Changements arrivées dans le globe', in Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), collected in Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire (1878), Vol. 2, 427-428. Translated by Ian Ellis, from the original French: “Changements arrivées dans le globe: Quand on a vu de ses yeux une montagne s’avancer dans une plaine, c’est-à-dire un immense rocher de cette montagne se détacher et couvrir des champs, un château tout entier enfoncé dans la terre, un fleuve englouti qui sort ensuite de son abîme, des marques indubitables qu’un vaste amas d’eau inondait autrefois un pays habité aujourd’hui, et cent vestiges d’autres révolutions, on est alors plus disposé à croire les grands changements qui ont altéré la face du monde, que ne l’est une dame de Paris qui sait seulement que la place où est bâtie sa maison était autrefois un champ labourable. Mais une dame de Naples, qui a vu sous terre les ruines d’Herculanum, est encore moins asservie au préjugé qui nous fait croire que tout a toujours été comme il est aujourd’hui.”
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Alter (64)  |  Alteration (31)  |  Altered (32)  |  Amount (153)  |  Belief (615)  |  Bias (22)  |  Boulder (8)  |  Breaking (3)  |  Broken (56)  |  Built (7)  |  Buried (2)  |  Burst (41)  |  Castle (5)  |  Change (639)  |  Country (269)  |  Cover (40)  |  Covering (14)  |  Disappearance (28)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Entire (50)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Everything (489)  |  Eye (440)  |  Face (214)  |  Field (378)  |  Flood (52)  |  Geologic History (2)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  Herculaneum (4)  |  House (143)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Immense (89)  |  Inhabitation (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lady (12)  |  Land (131)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mark (47)  |  More (2558)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Move (223)  |  Naples (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paris (11)  |  Place (192)  |  Plain (34)  |  Plus (43)  |  River (140)  |  Rock (176)  |  Ruin (44)  |  Say (989)  |  Sinking (6)  |  Subject (543)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Today (321)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vestige (11)  |  Water (503)  |  Willing (44)

I turn my eyes to the schools & universities of Europe
And there behold the loom of Locke whose woof rages dire,
Washed by the water-wheels of Newton. Black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every nation; cruel works
Of many wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden, which
Wheel within wheel in freedom revolve, in harmony & peace.
'Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion' (1804-20), First Chapter, Pl.15, lines 14-20. In W. H. Stevenson (ed.), The Poems of William Blake (1971), 654-55.
Science quotes on:  |  Cog (7)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Cruel (25)  |  Education (423)  |  Eye (440)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Harmony (105)  |  John Locke (61)  |  Loom (20)  |  Nation (208)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Other (2233)  |  Peace (116)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Revolve (26)  |  School (227)  |  Turn (454)  |  View (496)  |  Wash (23)  |  Water (503)  |  Wheel (51)  |  Work (1402)

We must painfully acknowledge that, precisely because of its great intellectual developments, the best of man's domesticated animals—the dog—most often becomes the victim of physiological experiments. Only dire necessity can lead one to experiment on cats—on such impatient, loud, malicious animals. During chronic experiments, when the animal, having recovered from its operation, is under lengthy observation, the dog is irreplaceable; moreover, it is extremely touching. It is almost a participant in the experiments conducted upon it, greatly facilitating the success of the research by its understanding and compliance.
'Vivisection' (1893), as translated in Daniel P. Todes, Pavlov’s Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise (2002), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Acknowledgment (13)  |  Animal (651)  |  Become (821)  |  Best (467)  |  Cat (52)  |  Chronic (5)  |  Compliance (8)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Development (441)  |  Dog (70)  |  Domestication (5)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Facilitation (2)  |  Great (1610)  |  Impatience (13)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Irreplaceable (3)  |  Lead (391)  |  Loudness (3)  |  Malice (6)  |  Malicious (8)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Observation (593)  |  Operation (221)  |  Pain (144)  |  Participant (6)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Precision (72)  |  Recovery (24)  |  Research (753)  |  Success (327)  |  Touching (16)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Victim (37)


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.