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 was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index M > Category: Mist

Mist Quotes (17 quotes)

A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where the cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod—
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.
'Each in his Own Tongue', in Kansas in Literature: Part One, Poetry (1900), 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Call (781)  |  Cave (17)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Face (214)  |  Fire (203)  |  God (776)  |  Jellyfish (4)  |  Law (913)  |  Other (2233)  |  Planet (402)  |  Sense (785)  |  Turn (454)

A person by study must try to disengage the subject from useless matter, and to seize on points capable of improvement. ... When subjects are viewed through the mists of prejudice, useful truths may escape.
In An Essay on Aërial Navigation, With Some Observations on Ships (1844), 80.
Science quotes on:  |  Capability (44)  |  Capable (174)  |  Disengage (3)  |  Escape (85)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Matter (821)  |  Must (1525)  |  Person (366)  |  Point (584)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Seize (18)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Through (846)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Useful (260)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Uselessness (22)  |  View (496)

Firefly meteorites blazed against a dark background, and sometimes the lightning was frighteningly brilliant. Like a boy, I gazed open-mouthed at the fireworks, and suddenly, before my eyes, something magical occurred. A greenish radiance poured from Earth directly up to the station, a radiance resembling gigantic phosphorescent organ pipes, whose ends were glowing crimson, and overlapped by waves of swirling green mist.
“Consider yourself very lucky, Vladimir,” I said to myself, “to have watched the northern lights.”
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Background (44)  |  Blaze (14)  |  Boy (100)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crimson (4)  |  Dark (145)  |  Directly (25)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Eye (440)  |  Firefly (8)  |  Firework (2)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Glow (15)  |  Green (65)  |  Light (635)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Lucky (13)  |  Magic (92)  |  Meteorite (9)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Myself (211)  |  Northern Lights (2)  |  Occur (151)  |  Open (277)  |  Organ (118)  |  Overlap (9)  |  Phosphorescent (3)  |  Pipe (7)  |  Pour (9)  |  Radiance (7)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  Station (30)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Swirl (10)  |  Watch (118)  |  Wave (112)

Go to yon tower, where busy science plies
Her vast antennae, feeling through the skies
That little vernier on whose slender lines
The midnight taper trembles as it shines,
A silent index, tracks the planets’ march
In all their wanderings through the ethereal arch;
Tells through the mist where dazzled Mercury burns,
And marks the spot where Uranus returns.
From poem, pronounced to the Boston Mercantile Library Association (14 Oct, 1846), published as Urania: A Rhymed Lesson (1846), 9-10. [Note: This is too often seen online attributed incorrectly to Samuel Pierpont Langley, who quoted several lines from the poem in his New Astronomy (1888), without naming its actual original author. —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Antenna (5)  |  Arch (12)  |  Burn (99)  |  Busy (32)  |  Dazzle (4)  |  Ethereal (9)  |  Index (5)  |  Line (100)  |  Mark (47)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Midnight (12)  |  Observatory (18)  |  Planet (402)  |  Return (133)  |  Shine (49)  |  Silent (31)  |  Sky (174)  |  Spot (19)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Tower (45)  |  Track (42)  |  Tremble (8)  |  Uranus (6)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vernier (2)  |  Wander (44)

I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
In Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (1979), 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Float (31)  |  Gasp (6)  |  Lung (37)  |  More (2558)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Single (365)  |  Summit (27)

I have spent most of my days with wild mountain gorillas. Their home, and mine, has been the misty wooded slopes of the Virunga range, eight lofty volcanoes shared by three African nations, Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo … My study of the wild gorilla is not yet finished, and even when it is complete, it will contribute only a small part toward man’s understanding of his closest animal relatives, the great apes…
As quoted on the back cover of Camilla De la Bédoyère, No One Loved Gorillas More: Dian Fossey’s Letters From the Mist (2005), 178.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  Animal (651)  |  Complete (209)  |  Congo (2)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Finish (62)  |  Gorilla (19)  |  Home (184)  |  Lofty (16)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nation (208)  |  Relative (42)  |  Slope (10)  |  Study (701)  |  Understand (648)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Wild (96)  |  Woods (15)

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
In Adventure of Ideas (1933), 91.
Science quotes on:  |  Clarity (49)  |  Cost (94)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Float (31)  |  Function (235)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Hard (246)  |  Human (1512)  |  Idea (881)  |  Insistence (12)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Mode (43)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Premise (40)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Remember (189)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Straw (7)  |  Study (701)  |  Superstition (70)

Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.
In Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco (1674), 70.
Science quotes on:  |  Clearly (45)  |  Complete (209)  |  Continual (44)  |  Drunkard (8)  |  Excellent (29)  |  Head (87)  |  Judge (114)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Measure (241)  |  Mere (86)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Poet (97)  |  Reasonable (29)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)

Newton found that a star, examined through a glass tarnished by smoke, was diminished into a speck of light. But no smoke ever breathed so thick a mist as envy or detraction.
Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature (1855), 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Breath (61)  |  Envy (15)  |  Glass (94)  |  Light (635)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Speck (25)  |  Star (460)  |  Tarnish (3)  |  Through (846)

October 9, 1863
Always, however great the height of the balloon, when I have seen the horizon it has roughly appeared to be on the level of the car though of course the dip of the horizon is a very appreciable quantity or the same height as the eye. From this one might infer that, could the earth be seen without a cloud or anything to obscure it, and the boundary line of the plane approximately the same height as the eye, the general appearance would be that of a slight concavity; but I have never seen any part of the surface of the earth other than as a plane.
Towns and cities, when viewed from the balloon are like models in motion. I shall always remember the ascent of 9th October, 1863, when we passed over London about sunset. At the time when we were 7,000 feet high, and directly over London Bridge, the scene around was one that cannot probably be equalled in the world. We were still so low as not to have lost sight of the details of the spectacle which presented itself to our eyes; and with one glance the homes of 3,000,000 people could be seen, and so distinct was the view, that every large building was easily distinguishable. In fact, the whole of London was visible, and some parts most clearly. All round, the suburbs were also very distinct, with their lines of detached villas, imbedded as it were in a mass of shrubs; beyond, the country was like a garden, its fields, well marked, becoming smaller and smaller as the eye wandered farther and farther away.
Again looking down, there was the Thames, throughout its whole length, without the slightest mist, dotted over its winding course with innumerable ships and steamboats, like moving toys. Gravesend was visible, also the mouth of the Thames, and the coast around as far as Norfolk. The southern shore of the mouth of the Thames was not so clear, but the sea beyond was seen for many miles; when at a higher elevation, I looked for the coast of France, but was unable to see it. On looking round, the eye was arrested by the garden-like appearance of the county of Kent, till again London claimed yet more careful attention.
Smoke, thin and blue, was curling from it, and slowly moving away in beautiful curves, from all except one part, south of the Thames, where it was less blue and seemed more dense, till the cause became evident; it was mixed with mist rising from the ground, the southern limit of which was bounded by an even line, doubtless indicating the meeting of the subsoils of gravel and clay. The whole scene was surmounted by a canopy of blue, everywhere free from cloud, except near the horizon, where a band of cumulus and stratus extended all round, forming a fitting boundary to such a glorious view.
As seen from the earth, the sunset this evening was described as fine, the air being clear and the shadows well defined; but, as we rose to view it and its effects, the golden hues increased in intensity; their richness decreased as the distance from the sun increased, both right and left; but still as far as 90º from the sun, rose-coloured clouds extended. The remainder of the circle was completed, for the most part, by pure white cumulus of well-rounded and symmetrical forms.
I have seen London by night. I have crossed it during the day at the height of four miles. I have often admired the splendour of sky scenery, but never have I seen anything which surpassed this spectacle. The roar of the town heard at this elevation was a deep, rich, continuous sound the voice of labour. At four miles above London, all was hushed; no sound reached our ears.
Travels in the Air (1871), 99-100.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Attention (196)  |  Balloon (16)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Both (496)  |  Bound (120)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Building (158)  |  Canopy (8)  |  Car (75)  |  Cause (561)  |  Circle (117)  |  Claim (154)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Completed (30)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Country (269)  |  Course (413)  |  Curve (49)  |  Deep (241)  |  Detail (150)  |  Distance (171)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Down (455)  |  Ear (69)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Elevation (13)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Evident (92)  |  Extend (129)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Farther (51)  |  Field (378)  |  Flight (101)  |  Form (976)  |  Forming (42)  |  Free (239)  |  Garden (64)  |  General (521)  |  Glance (36)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Golden (47)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  High (370)  |  Home (184)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Intensity (34)  |  Labor (200)  |  Large (398)  |  Limit (294)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Low (86)  |  Marked (55)  |  Mass (160)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Mouth (54)  |  Never (1089)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  People (1031)  |  Present (630)  |  Pure (299)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reach (286)  |  Remainder (7)  |  Remember (189)  |  Right (473)  |  Rising (44)  |  Rose (36)  |  Scene (36)  |  Sea (326)  |  See (1094)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Ship (69)  |  Shrub (5)  |  Sight (135)  |  Sky (174)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Sound (187)  |  South (39)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Splendour (8)  |  Steamboat (7)  |  Still (614)  |  Suburb (7)  |  Sun (407)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Surface (223)  |  Surface Of The Earth (36)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Thames (6)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Toy (22)  |  View (496)  |  Visible (87)  |  Wander (44)  |  White (132)  |  Whole (756)  |  Winding (8)  |  World (1850)

On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.
In 'Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 95.
Science quotes on:  |  Arc (14)  |  Begin (275)  |  Crane (4)  |  Day (43)  |  Descent (30)  |  Emerge (24)  |  Feed (31)  |  Final (121)  |  Ground (222)  |  Marsh (10)  |  Motionless (4)  |  New (1273)  |  Noisy (3)  |  Settle (23)  |  Sky (174)  |  Spiral (19)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Wing (79)

Physical investigation, more than anything besides, helps to teach us the actual value and right use of the Imagination—of that wondrous faculty, which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man; the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented fluxions, nor Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another Continent.
Presidential Address to Anniversary meeting of the Royal Society (30 Nov 1859), Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (1860), 10, 165.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Aid (101)  |  Alkali (6)  |  America (143)  |  Astray (13)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Become (821)  |  Christopher Columbus (16)  |  Continent (79)  |  Sir Humphry Davy (49)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Element (322)  |  Error (339)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fluxion (7)  |  Genius (301)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Lead (391)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Never (1089)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Physical (518)  |  Ramble (3)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Right (473)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Teach (299)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Wondrous (22)

Arthur Stanley Eddington quote: The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrödinger’s mist like a genie emergin
The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrödinger’s mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.
Gifford Lectures (1927), The Nature of the Physical World (1928), 199.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Electron (96)  |  Erwin Schrödinger (68)

The last few meters up to the summit no longer seem so hard. On reaching the top, I sit down and let my legs dangle into space. I don’t have to climb anymore. I pull my camera from my rucksack and, in my down mittens, fumble a long time with the batteries before I have it working properly. Then I film Peter. Now, after the hours of torment, which indeed I didn’t recognize as torment, now, when the monotonous motion of plodding upwards is at an end, and I have nothing more to do than breathe, a great peace floods my whole being. I breathe like someone who has run the race of his life and knows that he may now rest forever. I keep looking all around, because the first time I didn’t see anything of the panorama I had expected from Everest, neither indeed did I notice how the wind was continually chasing snow across the summit. In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single, narrow, gasping lung, floating over the mists and the summits.
In Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (1979), 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Across (32)  |  Anymore (5)  |  Battery (12)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belong (168)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Camera (7)  |  Chase (14)  |  Climb (39)  |  Continually (17)  |  Dangle (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  End (603)  |  Everest (10)  |  Expect (203)  |  Eyesight (5)  |  Film (12)  |  First (1302)  |  First Time (14)  |  Float (31)  |  Flood (52)  |  Forever (111)  |  Gasp (6)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hour (192)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Keep (104)  |  Know (1538)  |  Last (425)  |  Leg (35)  |  Let (64)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Looking (191)  |  Lung (37)  |  Meter (9)  |  Monotonous (3)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Myself (211)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notice (81)  |  Panorama (5)  |  Peace (116)  |  Plod (3)  |  Properly (21)  |  Pull (43)  |  Race (278)  |  Reach (286)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rucksack (3)  |  Run (158)  |  See (1094)  |  Seem (150)  |  Single (365)  |  Sit (51)  |  Snow (39)  |  Someone (24)  |  Space (523)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  State (505)  |  Summit (27)  |  Time (1911)  |  Top (100)  |  Torment (18)  |  Upward (44)  |  Upwards (6)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wind (141)  |  Work (1402)

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), canto 123. Collected in Alfred Tennyson and William James Rolfe (ed.) The Poetic and Dramatic works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1898), 194.
Science quotes on:  |  Central (81)  |  Change (639)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Deep (241)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Flow (89)  |  Form (976)  |  Hill (23)  |  Land (131)  |  Long (778)  |  Melting (6)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Roar (6)  |  Roll (41)  |  Sea (326)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Shape (77)  |  Solid (119)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stillness (5)  |  Street (25)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Tree (269)

There was no instant when a mist of plankton … was not swirling in the path of the beam [of the bathysphere].
As quoted by Rachel Carson in The Sea Around Us (1950, 2003), 62. Carson states that in his bathysphere descent, more than a quarter of a mile down, Beebe reported aggregations of living things “as thick as I have ever seen them.” At half a mile—the deepest descent of the bathysphere—Dr. Beebe recalled the mist of plankton.
Science quotes on:  |  Bathysphere (2)  |  Beam (26)  |  Instant (46)  |  Path (159)  |  Plankton (3)  |  Swirl (10)

When the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy.
Vitruvius
In De Architectura, Book 1, Chap 4, Sec. 1. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Blow (45)  |  Body (557)  |  Breath (61)  |  Breeze (8)  |  Creature (242)  |  Disease (340)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Malaria (10)  |  Marsh (10)  |  Mingle (9)  |  Morning (98)  |  Poisonous (4)  |  Site (19)  |  Sunrise (14)  |  Town (30)  |  Unhealthy (2)  |  Waft (2)  |  Will (2350)


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.