Gentle Quotes (9 quotes)
Among the sea-fishes many stories are told about the dolphin, indicative of his gentle and kindly nature…. It appears to be the fleetest of all animals, marine and terrestrial, and it can leap over the masts of large vessels.
In 'The History of Animals' (350 BC), Great Books of the Western World (1952), Vol. 9, 156.
I watched Baeyer activating magnesium with iodine for a difficult Grignard reaction; it was done in a test tube, which he watched carefully as he moved it gently by hand over a flame for three quarters of an hour. The test tube was the apparatus to Baeyer.
In Richard Willstätter, Arthur Stoll (ed. of the original German) and Lilli S. Hornig (trans.), From My Life: The Memoirs of Richard Willstätter (1958), 140.
Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth, and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world.
…...
Starres by the Sun are not inlarg’d but showne.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awaken’d root doe bud out now.
If, as in water stir’d more circles bee
Produc’d by one, love such additions take,
Those like to many spheares, but one heaven make,
For, they are all concentrique unto thee.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awaken’d root doe bud out now.
If, as in water stir’d more circles bee
Produc’d by one, love such additions take,
Those like to many spheares, but one heaven make,
For, they are all concentrique unto thee.
From poem 'Loves Growth'in Poems on Several Occasions (1719), 23-24.
The experienced observer does more than merely report and recite. He guides the eager student to an understanding of the earth. He may chart the scientist’s steep, barren road of sober observation and strict deduction, or the artist’s gentle road of contemplation and empathy. And, finally, he may point out his own unique way, the path of the initiated, which leads him from the laboratories and libraries to the meadows and flower gardens of the living earth.
In 'Prologue', Conversation with the Earth (1954), 7. As translated by E.B. Garside from Gespräch mit der Erde (1947).
The living and dead look well together in woods. Trees receive a most beautiful burial.
Nature takes fallen trees gently to her bosom—at rest from storms. They seem to have been called home out of the sky to sleep now.
In Linnie Marsh Wolfe (ed.), John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938 1979), 313. Entered in journal while on sled trip exploring Muir Glacier, its boundaries and tributaries; Hemlock Mountain (11-21 Jul 1890).
The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.
In 'Money', In Our Time (1976), 37.
The rocks have a history; gray and weatherworn, they are veterans of many battles; they have most of them marched in the ranks of vast stone brigades during the ice age; they have been torn from the hills, recruited from the mountaintops, and marshaled on the plains and in the valleys; and now the elemental war is over, there they lie waging a gentle but incessant warfare with time and slowly, oh, so slowly, yielding to its attacks!
In Under the Apple-Trees (1916), 42.
The study of the history of mathematics will not make better mathematicians but gentler ones, it will enrich their minds, mellow their hearts, and bring out their finer qualities.
In The Study of the History of Mathematics (1936), 28.
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) -- 
