Limbo Quotes (2 quotes)
In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,—some of them,—and are eager to give us a sign and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,—not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets, all alike.
In essay 'Books', collected in Society and Solitude (1870, 1871), 171
That theory is regarded by some enthusiastic opponents, as already on the threshold of the limbo appointed for exploded hypotheses.
In Bonney’s Appendix II, 'Summary of the Principal Contributions to the History of Coral Reefs Since The Year 1874' added to Charles Darwin, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (3rd Ed., 1889), 323-324. “That theory” is Darwin’s theory of the formation of coral reefs. Bonney summarizes the arguments of the “enthusiastic opponents” and then gives his reasons for disagreeing with those opponents.
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) -- 
