Mercury Quotes

• Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.

  Alexander Pope

  Powerful, Learning, Science

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Chalmers (1807). “A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published”, p.118

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• The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.

  William Shakespeare

  Song, Apollo, Harsh

  'Love's Labour's Lost' (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. [938]

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• I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Moon, Saturn

  "Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources" by James Wood, p. 166, 1893.

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• Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
  And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

  Alexander Pope

  Life, Lying, Venus

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker, Whitwell Elwin, William John Courthope (1871). “The Works of Alexander Pope: New Ed. Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials, Collected in Part by John Wilson Croker. With Introd. and Notes by Whitwell Elwin”, p.180

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• The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Change, Lakes, Ponds

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.497, Delphi Classics

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• Yet in this my stars were not Mercury as morning star in the angle of the seventh house, in quartile with Mars, but they were Copernicus, they were Tycho Brahe, without whose books of observations everything which has now been brought by me into the brightest daylight would lie buried in darkness.

  Johannes Kepler

  Morning, Stars, Lying

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• Every body consists of three ingredients. The names of these are Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt.

  Paracelsus

  Names, Three, Body

  Paracelsus (1967). “The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus the Great: Hermetic medicine and hermetic philosophy”

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• On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

  J. B. Priestley

  Mean, Loss, Air

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• This is our mercury, our lunary, but whosoever thinks of any other water besides this, is ignorant and foolish, never attaining to the desired effects.

  George Ripley

  Stupid, Thinking, Water

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• Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd, Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd.

  Alexander Pope

  Strong, Men, Growth

  Alexander Pope (1873). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope Edited with Notes and Introductory Memoir by Adolphus William Ward”, p.205

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• Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather.

  David Hare

  Change, Weather, Littles

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• A Mercury is not made out of any block of wood.

  Apuleius

  Block, Sculpture, Woods

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• I therefore concluded, and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury about the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous other observations.

  Galileo Galilei

  Stars, Moving, Science

  "The English Renaissance: An Anthology of Sources and Document". Book by Kate Aughterson (p. 383), June 1, 2002.

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• But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths.

  Galileo Galilei

  Stars, Moving, Science

  "Sidereus Nuncius, Or The Sidereal Messenger". Book by Galileo Galilei, March 13, 1610.

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• Mercury poisoning sounds like a rich man's disease . . . like something you might get from the leather seats in your Lamborghini.

  Jeremy Piven

  Men, Sound, Lamborghini

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• I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

  Gary Cherone

  Music, Song, Queens

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• If there were a god of New York, it would be the Greek's Hermes, the Roman's Mercury. He embodies New York qualities: the quick exchange, the fastness of language and style, craftiness, the mixing of people and crossing of borders, imagination.

  James Hillman

  New York, People, Imagination

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• The experiment left no doubt that, as far as accuracy of measurement went, the resistance disappeared. At the same time, however, something unexpected occurred. The disappearance did not take place gradually but abruptly. From 1/500 the resistance at 4.2K, it could be established that the resistance had become less than a thousand-millionth part of that at normal temperature. Thus the mercury at 4.2K has entered a new state, which, owing to its particular electrical properties, can be called the state of superconductivity.

  Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

  Science, Doubt, Owing

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• Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of those ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine, or a rank poison.

  Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

  Science, Differences, Medicine

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• In 1950, when the Giants signed me, they gave me $15,000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn't drive, but I had it in the parking lot there, and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing

  Willie Mays

  Car, Community, Giants

  "Greatest All-Around Player in the History of Baseball". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. February 19, 1996.

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• He, who for an ordinary cause, resigns the fate of his patient to mercury, is a vile enemy to the sick; and, if he is tolerably popular, will, in one successful season, have paved the way for the business of life, for he has enough to do, ever afterward, to stop the mercurial breach of the constitutions of his dilapidated patients. He has thrown himself in fearful proximity to death, and has now to fight him at arm's length as long as the patient maintains a miserable existence.

  Nathaniel Chapman

  Fighting, Fate, Successful

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• You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.

  Blaise Pascal

  Believe, Air, Feet

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• I've been blessed. I grew up and played and worked and created with the Freddie Mercury, the Jimi Hendrix, the Keith Richards, the John Paul Jones of my generation

  Steven Adler

  Blessed, Generations, Keith

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• If I hadn't had Freddie Mercury's lyrics to hold on to as a kid I don't know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music... it would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life.

  Axl Rose

  Teacher, Kids, Mind

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• I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example, when we're backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddy [sic] Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd, which is something I totally admire and envy.

  Freddie Mercury

  Reading, Writing, Light

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