Accounts Quotes - Page 23

• The thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the sincere thing.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Book, Likes, Forget

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Ponkapog papers, A sea turn, and other matters”

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• Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account simply because we are dead.

  Robertson Davies

  Triumph, Reason, Should

  "Haunted by Halloween". The New York Times, October 31, 1990.

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• Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

  Charles Darwin

  Differences, Chance, Origin Of Species

  Charles Darwin (2010). “Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies”, p.286, OUP Oxford

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• Never pretend to have money except when you are in straits. The poor man who pretends to have a bank account betters his credit and takes no risk. But the prosperous individual who counts his money in the street, forthwith will be invited to attend a charity bazaar.

  George Ade

  Money, Men, Risk

  George Ade (1960). “The America of George Ade, 1866-1944: Fables, Short Stories, Essays”, New York, Putnam [1960]

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• Moral: Don't try to Account for Anything.

  George Ade

  Trying, Moral

  George Ade (1960). “The America of George Ade, 1866-1944: Fables, Short Stories, Essays”, New York, Putnam [1960]

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• Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

  Niels Bohr

  Independent, Judgement, Development

  Niels Bohr, Leon Rosenfeld (1999). “Collected works”

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• The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Flesh, Peculiar, Extravagance

  "Money And Class In America: Notes And Observations On Our Civil Religion" by Lewis H. Lapham, (Chapter 8, Holy Dread, p. 211), 1989.

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• A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself - and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?

  Djuna Barnes

  Men, Shadow, Wells

  "Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes, (Ch. 6), 1936.

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• I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups - (a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Groups, Three, Taste

  Letter to Reinhardt Kleiner (7 March 1920), in "Selected Letters I, 1911-1924" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (p. 110), 1964.

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• If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines - the basis of life - developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life's foundation has paralyzed science's attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism's universal reach.

  Michael Behe

  Eerie, Silence, Focus

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

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• It is often said that in prosperity we have many friends, but that we are usually neglected when things go badly. I disagree. Not only do malicious people flock about us in order to witness our ruin, but other unfortunates as well, who have been kept away by our happiness, and now feel close to us on account of our troubles.

  Andre Maurois

  Order, People, Ruins

  "The Art of Living". Book by Andre Maurois, 1939.

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• Stupidity is a factor to be reckoned with in human affairs. The true leader always expects to encounter it, and prepares to endure it patiently so long as it is normal stupidity. He knows that his ideas will be distorted, his orders carelessly executed; and that there will be jealousy among his assistants. He takes these inevitable phenomena into account, and instead of attempting to find men without faults, who are non-existent, he tries to make use of the best men at his disposal - as they are, and not as they ought to be.

  Andre Maurois

  Men, Order, Ideas

  "The Art of Living". Book by Andre Maurois, 1939.

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• The truth has no need to be uttered to be made apparent, and ... one may perhaps gather it with more certainty, without waiting for words and without even taking any account of them, from countless outward signs, even from certain invisible phenomena, analogous in the sphere of human character to what atmospheric changes are in the physical world.

  Marcel Proust

  Truth, Character, Waiting

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way”, p.80, Modern Library

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• History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history.

  Andre Malraux

  Art, Understanding, May

  "Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Part IV, Chapter VI, 1951.

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• I am convinced that there is no sort of boundary between the living and the mental or between the biological and the psychological. From the moment an organism takes account of a previous experience and adapts to a new situation, that very much resembles psychology.

  Jean Piaget

  Psychology, Moments, Boundaries

  Jean-Claude Bringuier, Jean Piaget (1989). “Conversations with Jean Piaget”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Teacher, Teaching, Levels

  "Culture and Value" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, (p. 43e), 1980.

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• He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who to lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.

  Owen Feltham

  Men, Waiting, May

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 1895.

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• We have two distinct types of political organization to take into account; and clearly, too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore when we include both types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties; difficulties of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which, until within the last half-century, none of them has tried to resolve.

  Albert J. Nock

  Government, Organization, Two

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 38), 1935.

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• Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers.

  Lionel Trilling

  Horse, Wrath, Intellectual

  "The Portable Matthew Arnold " by Lionel Trilling, Viking Press, 1949.

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• Christ's divinity accounts for His exaltation to the right hand of God, justifies the worship of angels and the confidence of mankind. It makes clear His right to the throne of the universe, and enables the mind to understand why He is exalted in providence, in grace, and in judgment. It is the unifying truth that harmonizes all other teachings of Christianity, and renders the entire system symmetrical and complete.

  George C. Lorimer

  Teaching, Angel, Hands

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (p. 57), 1895.

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• Yes, I spent two long years, traveling all over the United States, all over Europe, interviewing many, many, many people who had been thrown out of their academic jobs because they taught that there was a possibility of life coming from something other than Darwinism, who thought that possibly random selection and mutations didn't account for the universe, didn't account for gravity, didn't account for why nobody had ever seen an individual species evolve - no one's ever seen an individual species evolve!

  Ben Stein

  Jobs, Two, Years

  Fox News Documentary, April 14, 2008.

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• The generation of Isaiah did not require the detailed description; his account, "I saw the Lord," &c., sufficed. The generation of the Babylonian exile wanted to learn all the details. ...Isaiah was so familiar with it that he did not consider it necessary to communicate it to others as a new thing, especially as it was well known to the intelligent.

  Maimonides

  Intelligent, Details, Generations

  "Guide for the Perplexed". Book by Maimonides, Ch.6, 1190.

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• It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Years, Twenties

  Rudolf Arnheim (1990). “Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest”, p.247, Univ of California Press

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• Orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular. Mere orderliness leads to increasing impoverishment and finally to the lowest possible level of structure, no longer clearly distinguishable from chaos, which is the absence of order. A counterprinciple is needed, to which orderliness is secondary. It must supply what is to be ordered.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Men, Order, Levels

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• It is my greatest misfortune to be too lazy, and by the few mortifications I have already set with on that account I predict many evils in my future life. I have always the inclination to do what I ought; but by continually procrastinating for tomorrow the business of today, I insensibly delay, until at the end of one month I find myself in the same place as when I began it.

  Washington Allston

  Evil, Lazy, Delay

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