Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and that ...to compress it further can only make it more obscure?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what ...they have been led to expect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A magazine or a newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus, a new ratio between commerce and intellect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framed... on the ratio of owners and of owning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habit...s of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... these great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and relig...ious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Darwin was, like Copernicus, a one-idea man. Each had his "nuclear inspiration" early in life, and spent the rest of his life work...ing it out--the ratio of inspiration to perspiration being heavily in favor of the second. Both lacked the many-sidedness, that universality of interest and amazing multitude of achievement in unrelated fields of research which characterised Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, and hundreds of lesser but equally versatile geniuses. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Darwin and Copernicus, after the decisive turning point when their course was set, led a life of duty, devotion to task, rigorous self-discipline, and spiritual desiccation. It looks as if the artesian wells of their inspiration had been replaced by a mechanical water supply kept under pressure by sheer power of will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »