Resplendent Quotes (3 quotes)
For all their wealth of content, for all the sum of history and social institution invested in them, music, mathematics, and chess are resplendently useless (applied mathematics is a higher plumbing, a kind of music for the police band). They are metaphysically trivial, irresponsible. They refuse to relate outward, to take reality for arbiter. This is the source of their witchery.
In 'A Death of Kings', George Steiner at The New Yorker (2009), 209.
If needed to give a comparison expressing my feelings about the science of life, I would say that it is a magnificent reception room, resplendent with light, which one can only reach by passing through a long and dreadful kitchen.
In Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865), 23. From the original French, “S’il fallait donner une comparaison qui exprimât mon sentiment sur la science de la vie, je dirais que c’est un salon superbe tout resplendissant de lumière, dans lequel on ne peut parvenir qu’en passant par une longue et affreuse cuisine.” English version by Webmaster using Google Translate. This version has additional context than the customary translation, elsewhere on this web page, that begins, “The science of life is a superb….”
The mountain slopes … are covered with dense forests of pines and firs. The lakes are often fringed with beautiful aspens, and when the autumn winds come their golden leaves are carried over the landscape in clouds of resplendent sheen.
In Canyons of the Colorado (1895), 68.
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
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