"Did you ever hear my definition of marriage? It is, that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them."

Sydney Smith Philosophy See all quotes by Sydney Smith →

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“My idea of heaven is, eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”

“When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.”

“I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.”

“My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon.”

“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.”

“Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained after his time, but mind — which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume, in 1737.”

Resonant Thoughts

"For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians; your mother commands me, and you command your mother."

— Themistocles

Politics

#leadership

"Gravitation is not only similar to inertia in its generality, it is also measured by the same number... the mass. The inertial mass is what Newton calls the "quantity of matter": it is a measure for t…"

— Willem de Sitter

Science1872–1934

#life

"It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people …"

— Gertrude Stein

Literature1874–1946

#science

"Nadia shook her head, marveling at the capacity people had for ignoring what they had in common, and fighting bitterly over whatever small differences existed between them."

— Kim Stanley Robinson

Science1952

#Human Nature