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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Infirmity

Infirmity Quotes (4 quotes)

Asylum. A place where detected lunatics are sent by those who have had the adroitness to conceal their own infirmity.
Anonymous
Webmaster suggests Clara Lucas Balfour probably did NOT originate this quote. She was 23 when it appeared without any author cited in a space-padding group of humourous word definitions in 'Extracts from a Modern Dictionary', New-York Mirror (1831), 9 232. These witticisms appeared in at least eight more different publications before 1835, and more magazines in 1853 and 1861. Finally this quote appears, without citation, in a miscellany compiled by Clara Lucas Balfour (ed.), Sunbeams for All Seasons (New ed., 1861), 14. Balfour gives credits to known writers (such as M.J.A., in Family Herald'), but none appears with the subject quote in her own book. So Webmaster is skeptical of the quote later being attributed to her in Edwin Davies (ed.), Other Men’s Minds, Or, Seven Thousand Choice Extracts on History, Science, Philosophy, Religion (1888), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Asylum (5)  |  Conceal (19)  |  Detect (45)  |  Lunatic (9)  |  Psychiatry (26)

Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities, and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, a fire extinguished by excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.
In Louis Klopsch, Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Diet (56)  |  Disease (340)  |  Excess (23)  |  Extinguish (8)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fountain (18)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Gluttony (6)  |  Health (210)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Natural (810)  |  Oil (67)  |  Source (101)

It is an infirmity of the human mind that it demands an explanation before it has assorted the facts.
At opening session of the Pathology Section of the British Medical Association Annual Meeting, Oxford (1904). Quoted as recollected by D.J. Hamilton in 'Obituary: The Late Prof. William Bulloch', The British Medical Journal (15 Mar 1941), 1, No. 4184, 422.
Science quotes on:  |  Demand (131)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Mind (1377)

Many Species of Animals have been lost out of the World, which Philosophers and Divines are unwilling to admit, esteeming the Destruction of anyone Species a Dismembring of the Universe, and rendring the World imperfect; whereas they think the Divine Providence is especially concerned, and solicitous to secure and preserve the Works of the Creation. And truly so it is, as appears, in that it was so careful to lodge all Land Animals in the Ark at the Time of the general Deluge; and in that, of all Animals recorded in Natural Histories, we cannot say that there hath been anyone Species lost, no not of the most infirm, and most exposed to Injury and Ravine. Moreover, it is likely, that as there neither is nor can be any new Species of Animals produced, all proceeding from Seeds at first created; so Providence, without which one individual Sparrow falls not to the ground, doth in that manner watch over all that are created, that an entire Species shall not be lost or destroyed by any Accident. Now, I say, if these Bodies were sometimes the Shells and Bones of Fish, it will thence follow, that many Species have been lost out of the World... To which I have nothing to reply, but that there may be some of them remaining some where or other in the Seas, though as yet they have not come to my Knowledge. Far though they may have perished, or by some Accident been destroyed out of our Seas, yet the Race of them may be preserved and continued still in others.
John Ray
Three Physico-Theological Discourses (1713), Discourse II, 'Of the General Deluge, in the Days of Noah; its Causes and Effects', 172-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Admission (17)  |  Animal (651)  |  Ark (6)  |  Bone (101)  |  Concern (239)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Creation (350)  |  Deluge (14)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Dismemberment (3)  |  Divine (112)  |  Esteem (18)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exposed (33)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Fall (243)  |  First (1302)  |  Fish (130)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fossil (143)  |  General (521)  |  Ground (222)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Individual (420)  |  Injury (36)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Loss (117)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perish (56)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Preserve (91)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Providence (19)  |  Race (278)  |  Ravine (5)  |  Record (161)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Remains (9)  |  Rendering (6)  |  Reply (58)  |  Say (989)  |  Sea (326)  |  Seed (97)  |  Shell (69)  |  Sparrow (6)  |  Species (435)  |  Still (614)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truly (118)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unwillingness (5)  |  Watch (118)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)


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)

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- 100 -
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- 90 -
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- 80 -
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Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
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Robert Fulton
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- 60 -
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Martin Fischer
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Karl Popper
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- 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
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Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
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by Ian Ellis
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