Thus I believe that without doing violence to the ancient doctrine of the Chinese, one can say that the Li has been brought by the... perfection of its nature to choose, from several possibilities, the most appropriate; and that by this means it has produced the Ki (Ch'i) or matter with dispositions such that all the rest has come about by natural propensities, in the same way that Monsieur Descartes claims to bring forth the present order of the world as a consequence of a small number of initially generated assumptions. Thus the Chinese, far from being blameworthy, merit praise for their ideas of things being created by their natural propensity and by a pre-established harmony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to underst...and that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value the...ir money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have not carried out experiments to prove it, but may I suggest that people in the theater and the cinema do not sit in the same... way? The theater requires attentiveness, and people must sit up alertly to see what is often a small area of concentration. Whereas in the cinema, the screen looms above us, and many people sink into reclining positions to watch. Some luxurious movie houses have seats that slide back to allow this posture. In the cinema we sometimes put our feet on the back of the row in front, loll across two seats, and damage the upholstery. Would this happen with a lively and commanding presence on the stage, or is it the result of a sort of loneliness in cinemas?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me in the same way as do those faint revelations of the Real which are vouchsafed to men ...from time to time, or rather from eternity to eternity. When I remember the history of that faint light in our firmament which we call Venus, which ancient men regarded, and which most modern men still regard, as a bright spark attached to a hollow sphere revolving about our earth, but which we have discovered to be another world, in itself,--how Copernicus, reasoning long and patiently about the matter, predicted confidently concerning it, before yet the telescope had been invented,... and that within a century after his death the telescope was invented, and that prediction verified, by Galileo,--I am not without hope that we may, even here and now, obtain some accurate information concerning that OTHER WORLD which the instinct of mankind has so long predicted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trees lay at full length, four or five feet deep, and crossing each other in all directions, all black as charcoal, but perfec...tly sound within, still good for fuel or for timber; soon they would be cut into lengths and burnt again. Here were thousands of cords, enough to keep the poor of Boston and New York amply warm for a winter, which only cumbered the ground and were in the settler's way. And the whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually devoured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man warmed by it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The differences between the two men were pronounced. Galileo was an urbane gentleman who loved wine (which he described as "light ...held together by moisture"), women (he had three children by his mistress, Marina Gamba), and song (he was an accomplished musician). Kepler sneezed when he drank wine, had little luck with women, and heard his music in the stars. The deep organ-tones of religiosity and mysticism that resounded through Kepler's work struck Galileo as anachronistic and more than a bit embarrassing. Kepler suspected as much and pled with Galileo to please "not hold against me my rambling and my free way of speaking about nature." Galileo never answered his letter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »