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: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index F > Category: Feather

Feather Quotes (13 quotes)

A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoanut trees, with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feet and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters of cocoanuts—not more picturesque than a forest of colossal ragged parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be. I once heard a grouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree might be poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by lightning. I think that describes it better than a picture—and yet, without any question, there is something fascinating about a cocoanut tree—and graceful, too.
In Roughing It (1913), 184-85.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Branch (155)  |  Bunch (7)  |  Clean (52)  |  Cluster (16)  |  Coconut (2)  |  Colossal (15)  |  Describe (132)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Fascination (35)  |  Foliage (6)  |  Forest (161)  |  Grape (4)  |  Green (65)  |  Grove (7)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Look (584)  |  More (2558)  |  Picture (148)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Question (649)  |  Reach (286)  |  Say (989)  |  Shelter (23)  |  Something (718)  |  Spray (5)  |  Stem (31)  |  Straight (75)  |  Strike (72)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tree (269)  |  Trunk (23)

Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There's a plenty of signs. He is getting belittled to a germ—a little bit of a speck that you can't see without a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat to the size of a church. They take that speck and breed from it: first a flea; then a fly, then a bug, then cross these and get a fish, then a raft of fishes, all kinds, then cross the whole lot and get a reptile, then work up the reptiles till you've got a supply of lizards and spiders and toads and alligators and Congressmen and so on, then cross the entire lot again and get a plant of amphibiums, which are half-breeds and do business both wet and dry, such as turtles and frogs and ornithorhyncuses and so on, and cross-up again and get a mongrel bird, sired by a snake and dam'd by a bat, resulting in a pterodactyl, then they develop him, and water his stock till they've got the air filled with a million things that wear feathers, then they cross-up all the accumulated animal life to date and fetch out a mammal, and start-in diluting again till there's cows and tigers and rats and elephants and monkeys and everything you want down to the Missing Link, and out of him and a mermaid they propagate Man, and there you are! Everything ship-shape and finished-up, and nothing to do but lay low and wait and see if it was worth the time and expense.
'The Refuge of the Derelicts' collected in Mark Twain and John Sutton Tuckey, The Devil's Race-Track: Mark Twain's Great Dark Writings (1980), 340-41. - 1980
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Adam (7)  |  Air (366)  |  Amphibian (7)  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Life (21)  |  Bat (10)  |  Bird (163)  |  Both (496)  |  Bug (10)  |  Business (156)  |  Church (64)  |  Cow (42)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Develop (278)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Dry (65)  |  Elephant (35)  |  Enough (341)  |  Everything (489)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Expense (21)  |  Finish (62)  |  First (1302)  |  Fish (130)  |  Flea (11)  |  Fly (153)  |  Frog (44)  |  Germ (54)  |  Gnat (7)  |  Kind (564)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Lizard (7)  |  Lot (151)  |  Low (86)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mermaid (5)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Missing (21)  |  Missing Link (4)  |  Monkey (57)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Plant (320)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Pterodactyl (2)  |  Rat (37)  |  Reptile (33)  |  See (1094)  |  Ship (69)  |  Snake (29)  |  Speck (25)  |  Spider (14)  |  Start (237)  |  Supply (100)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tiger (7)  |  Time (1911)  |  Toad (10)  |  Turtle (8)  |  Wait (66)  |  Want (504)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worth (172)

All Nature bristles with the marks of interrogation—among the grass and the petals of flowers, amidst the feathers of birds and the hairs of mammals, on mountain and moorland, in sea and sky-everywhere. It is one of the joys of life to discover those marks of interrogation, these unsolved and half-solved problems and try to answer their questions.
In Riddles of Science (1932), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Bird (163)  |  Bristle (3)  |  Discover (571)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Flower (112)  |  Grass (49)  |  Hair (25)  |  Interrogation (5)  |  Joy (117)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Mark (47)  |  Moorland (2)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Petal (4)  |  Problem (731)  |  Question (649)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sky (174)  |  Solved (2)  |  Try (296)  |  Unsolved (15)

Bodies, projected in our air, suffer no resistance but from the air. Withdraw the air, as is done in Mr. Boyle's vacuum, and the resistance ceases. For in this void a bit of fine down and a piece of solid gold descend with equal velocity.
In 'General Scholium' from The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1729), Vol. 2, Book 3, 388.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Air Resistance (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Robert Boyle (28)  |  Cease (81)  |  Descend (49)  |  Down (455)  |  Equal (88)  |  Free Fall (2)  |  Gold (101)  |  Project (77)  |  Resistance (41)  |  Solid (119)  |  Vacuum (41)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Void (31)

Fractal geometry will make you see everything differently. There is a danger in reading further. You risk the loss of your childhood vision of clouds, forests, flowers, galaxies, leaves, feathers, rocks, mountains, torrents of water, carpet, bricks, and much else besides. Never again will your interpretation of these things be quite the same.
Fractals Everywhere (2000), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Brick (20)  |  Carpet (3)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Danger (127)  |  Everything (489)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forest (161)  |  Fractal (11)  |  Galaxies (29)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Leaf (73)  |  Loss (117)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Never (1089)  |  Reading (136)  |  Risk (68)  |  River (140)  |  Rock (176)  |  See (1094)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vision (127)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)

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)  |  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)  |  Winter (46)

I spent a long hot night here for the benefit of hosts of mosquitoes, and began to feel geology a rude trade, saying, with St. Bernard, “Je me vois un petit oiseau, sans plumes, presque toujours hors de son nid, exposé aux orages.”
In The Shoe and Canoe: Or Pictures of Travel in the Canadas (1850), 237. Describing camping overnight on a trip along the St. Lawrence river. The French sentence is given by Google Translate as “I see myself as a little bird, without feathers, almost always out of its nest, exposed to thunderstorms.”
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Camp (12)  |  Geology (240)  |  Mosquito (16)  |  Nest (26)  |  Thunderstorm (7)

I was ever of the opinion that the philosopher’s stone, and an holy war, were but the rendezvous of cracked brains, that wore their feather in their heads.
From essay, An Advertisement Touching a Holy War (1622). As collected and translated in Francis Bacon and Basil Montagu, The Works of Francis Bacon (1844), Vol. 2, 439. As quoted in Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations From Socrates to Macaulay (1876), 28. [Note: In Bacon’s time, the 17th century, the meaning of “advertise” was to give knowledge, advice or counsel. An “advertisement” meant the same in the form of a written statement. —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Crack (15)  |  Head (87)  |  Holy (35)  |  Holy War (2)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosopher�s Stone (8)  |  Rendezvous (2)  |  Stone (168)  |  War (233)

In six thousand years, you could never grow wings on a reptile. With sixty million, however, you could have feathers, too.
Annals of the Former World
Science quotes on:  |  Grow (247)  |  Million (124)  |  Never (1089)  |  Reptile (33)  |  Sixty (6)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Wing (79)  |  Year (963)

It is curious to observe with what different degrees of architectonic skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus, and so nearly correspondent in their general mode of life! for while the swallow and the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely fixing crusts or shells of loam as cunabula for their young, the bank-martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth, which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep. At the inner end of this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety, her rude nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers, very inartificially laid together.
In Letter to Daines Barrington, (26 Feb 1774), in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Bank (31)  |  Bird (163)  |  Crust (43)  |  Curious (95)  |  Deep (241)  |  Degree (277)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Endowed (52)  |  General (521)  |  Genus (27)  |  Good (906)  |  Goose (13)  |  Grass (49)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Horizontal (9)  |  House (143)  |  Inner (72)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Nest (26)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Providence (19)  |  Regular (48)  |  Safety (58)  |  Sand (63)  |  Shell (69)  |  Skill (116)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Together (392)  |  Two (936)  |  Usually (176)  |  Young (253)

The process of natural selection has been summed up in the phrase “survival of the fittest.” This, however, tells only part of the story. “Survival of the existing” in many cases covers more of the truth. For in hosts of cases the survival of characters rests not on any special usefulness or fitness, but on the fact that individuals possessing these characters have inhabited or invaded a certain area. The principle of utility explains survivals among competing structures. It rarely accounts for qualities associated with geographic distribution.
The nature of animals which first colonize a district must determine what the future fauna will be. From their specific characters, which are neither useful nor harmful, will be derived for the most part the specific characters of their successors.
It is not essential to the meadow lark that he should have a black blotch on the breast or the outer tail-feather white. Yet all meadow larks have these characters just as all shore larks have the tiny plume behind the ear. Those characters of the parent stock, which may be harmful in the new relations, will be eliminated by natural selection. Those especially helpful will be intensified and modified, but the great body of characters, the marks by which we know the species, will be neither helpful nor hurtful. These will be meaningless streaks and spots, variations in size of parts, peculiar relations of scales or hair or feathers, little matters which can neither help nor hurt, but which have all the persistence heredity can give.
Foot-notes to Evolution. A Series of Popular Addresses on the Evolution of Life (1898), 218.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Animal (651)  |  Behind (139)  |  Bird (163)  |  Body (557)  |  Certain (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Determine (152)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Ear (69)  |  Essential (210)  |  Explain (334)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fauna (13)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Geographic (10)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hair (25)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Hurtful (8)  |  Individual (420)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lark (2)  |  Little (717)  |  Matter (821)  |  Meadow (21)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Parent (80)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Persistence (25)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Principle (530)  |  Process (439)  |  Rest (287)  |  Scale (122)  |  Selection (130)  |  Special (188)  |  Species (435)  |  Specific (98)  |  Story (122)  |  Structure (365)  |  Successor (16)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Useful (260)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Utility (52)  |  Variation (93)  |  White (132)  |  Will (2350)

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
Dean Inge
From Romanes Lecture (27 May 1920), 'The Idea of Progress', collected in Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922), 167.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Kingdom (21)  |  Badly (32)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Cousin (12)  |  Creation (350)  |  Depict (3)  |  Devil (34)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Enslave (2)  |  Form (976)  |  Formulate (16)  |  Fur (7)  |  Human (1512)  |  Religion (369)  |  Rest (287)

Yesterday, a small white keel feather escaped from my goose and lodged in the bank boughs near the kitchen porch, where I spied it as I came home in the cold twilight. The minute I saw the feather, I was projected into May, knowing a barn swallow would be along to claim the prize and use it to decorate the front edge of its nest. Immediately, the December air seemed full of wings of swallows and the warmth of barns.
In 'Home-Coming' (10 Dec 1955), collected in Essays of E.B. White (1977), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Bank (31)  |  Barn (6)  |  Bough (10)  |  Claim (154)  |  Cold (115)  |  December (3)  |  Decorate (2)  |  Edge (51)  |  Front (16)  |  Full (68)  |  Goose (13)  |  Home (184)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Kitchen (14)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Minute (129)  |  Nest (26)  |  Prize (13)  |  Project (77)  |  Saw (160)  |  Seem (150)  |  Small (489)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Use (771)  |  Warmth (21)  |  White (132)  |  Wing (79)  |  Yesterday (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.