Atoms Quotes - Page 30

• ...it may be that there is no God, that the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms, that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain - that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true.

  Sterling M. McMurrin

  Beautiful, Believe, Heart

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• Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter - for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had - first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Dream, Stars, Spring

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “The Cyberiad”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We use the word "God" as representative of that which is timeless, immortal and infinite, that which produces order, which holds together the nucleus of an atom, which gives us life and death, neither masculine nor feminine, not a person, beyond any comprehension.

  Frederick Lenz

  God, Order, Life And Death

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• All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish's tail.

  Annie Dillard

  Oxygen, Blood, Iron

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.127, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.

  David Foster Wallace

  Crush, Gratitude, Lying

  "Will David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King Be the Most Boring Book Ever?" by Lane Brown, www.vulture.com. March 3, 2009.

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• So if we're all quarks and electrons ..." he begins. What?" We could make love and it would be nothing more than quarks and electrons rubbing together." Better than that," I say. "Nothing really 'rubs together' in the microscopic world. Matter never really touches other matter, so we could make love without any of our atoms touching at all. Remember that electrons sit on the outside of atoms, repelling other electrons. So we could make love and actually repel each other at the same time.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Making Love, Touching, Together

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• But that was the thing about zero. Its weakness. Even if zero had taken over the entire universe, the biggest fascist of all, one tiny gesture could deny it. One footprint, one atom. You didn't have to be a genius. You didn't even have to know that was what you were doing. You made a mark. You changed something. It said, "A human being passed here." And changed zero to one.

  Janet Fitch

  Zero, Taken, Weakness

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• The Universe was a silly place at best...but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Silly, Men, Self

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.135, Penguin

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• The images were gone, but Calvin was there, was with her, was part of her. She had moved beyond knowing him in sensory images to that place which is beyond images. Now she was kything Calvin, not red hair, or freckles, or eager blue eyes, or the glowing smile; nor was she hearing the deep voice with the occasional treble cracking; not any of this, but - Calvin. She was with Calvin, kything with every atom of her being, returning to him all the fortitude and endurance and hope which he had given her.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Eye, Hair, Blue

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• If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Apples, Would Be, Earth

  "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Book by Richard P. Feynman. Volume I; lecture 1, 'Atoms in Motion'; section 1-2, 'Matter is made of atoms'; p. 1-3, 1964.

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• I will go only so far as to say that I knew what an atom was.

  Paul Tibbets

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• There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea--that idea which the church has never ceased to embody--I AM!

  Henry Adams

  Ideas, Church, Use

  Henry Adams (2015). “Esther”, p.6, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• You can split atoms, but you can't split true love.

  Steve Fowler

  Splits

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• Hearing is the motion of molecules; sound is a wave in the atmosphere; solidity is the characteristic of spatial juxtaposition of atoms; smell is something given off by a body, rather than something belonging to a body.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Smell, Atmosphere, Sound

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• When passion has wrecked the body in one life, it is stamped upon the seed atom. In the next descent to rebirth, it is therefore impossible for him to gather sound material with which to build a brain of stable construction.

  Max Heindel

  Passion, Brain, Sound

  Max Heindel (2016). “Occult principles of health and healing”, p.71, Max Heindel

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• Not a ray is dimmed, not an atom worn; nature's oldest force is as good as new.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Rays, Force

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• How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Sleep, Incense

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• We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos.  Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Spring, Long

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• Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present. They have been accustomed to move and to meet in all manner of ways. For this reason, it came to pass that being spread abroad through a vast time and trying every sort of combination and motion, at length those come together that produce great things, like earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures.

  Lucretius

  Moving, Blow, Infinite Time

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• The molecules that comprise our body are traceable to the crucibles of the centers of stars.These atoms and molecules are in us because, in fact, the universe is in us. And, we are not only figuratively, but literally, stardust.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Crucible, Molecules

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible... remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God.

  Wernher von Braun

  Bible, Christian, Book

  "Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts & Funny Sayings". Book by Bob Phillips, 1993.

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• Every one is struggling for freedom-from the atom to the star. The ignorant man is satisfied if he can get freedom within a certain limit-if he can get rid of the bondage of hunger or of being thirsty. But that sage feels that there is a stronger bondage which has to be thrown off. He would not consider the freedom of the Red Indian as freedom at all.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Stars, Struggle, Men

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2252, Manonmani Publishers

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• Even a vortex is a vortex in something. You can't have a whirlpool without water; and you can't have a vortex without gas, or molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Ions, Water, Molecules

  "Back to Methuselah". Book by George Bernard Shaw, Acis, in Pt. V, 1921.

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• Scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories

  Eduardo Galeano

  Bird, Stories, Littles

  "Eduardo Galeano, Chronicler of Latin America’s 'Open Veins,' on His New Book 'Children of the Days'". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, www.democracynow.org. May 8, 2013.

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• No one would have known, from how he held my hand, [that] over the years of heartache he had hatched a plot to change my life forever. He held his grip and would not let me go. I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what binds one human to another is pain.

  Andrew Sean Greer

  Pain, Hands, Years

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