Oscillation Quotes

• Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Life, Choices

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• Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Life, Submission, Revolt

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• Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

  Hermann Broch

  Believe, Reality, Men

  Hermann Broch (2011). “The Sleepwalkers”, p.468, Vintage

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• For under certain conditions the chemical atoms emit light waves of a specific length or oscillation frequency - their familiar characteristic spectra - and these can come in the form of electromagnetic waves only from accelerated electric quanta.

  Johannes Stark

  Light, Atoms, Wave

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• Many of us may have watched the waves at sea. They rise, then fall, then rise again, then fall again... and this cycle continues endlessly. It is the same with our experience of the world and its objects and relationships. We may find happiness, but this happiness will soon turn to sorrow. The sorrow that we feel will subsequently turn back to happiness but this oscillation continues endlessly. In order to maintain inner balance, we need to find peace within instead of depending on the external world.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Spiritual, Fall, Order

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• Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next.

  David Abram

  Offering, Breathing, Drawing

  David Abram (2010). “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology”, p.61, Vintage

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• "I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur."

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Humorous, Mean, Sarcasm

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes”, p.195, Race Point Publishing

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• Men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Moving, Tired, Men

  George Bernard Shaw (2012). “Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy”, p.201, The Floating Press

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• If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Self, Political

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2006). “Huxley's Autobiography and Essays”, p.234, Cosimo, Inc.

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• When young Galileo, then a student at Pisa, noticed one day during divine service a chandelier swinging backwards and forwards, and convinced himself, by counting his pulse, that the duration of the oscillations was independent of the arc through which it moved, who could know that this discovery would eventually put it in our power, by means of the pendulum, to attain an accuracy in the measurement of time till then deemed impossible, and would enable the storm-tossed seaman in the most distant oceans to determine in what degree of longitude he was sailing?

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Time, Ocean, Mean

  Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan (1995). “Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays”, p.93, University of Chicago Press

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• The simplest type of breakdown exhibits itself as an oscillation in a goal-seeking process which appears only when that process is actively invoked.

  Norbert Wiener

  Goal, Process, Type

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.163, Da Capo Press

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• The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.

  George Leonard

  Numbers, Humanity, Different

  George Leonard (2009). “The Silent Pulse”, p.23, Gibbs Smith

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• There are a lot of parallels between the historical Henry VIII and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There's an oscillation and extremity of emotion throughout his repertoire that lends itself beautifully to the nature of Henry VIII, definitely. He will push things to the limit, and yet remain in emotional control.

  Natalie Dormer

  Emotional, Historical, Limits

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• [W]hen we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather ... What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes ... If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something.

  David Attenborough

  Attitude, Ocean, Grandchildren

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• There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Curves, Long, Racism

  Gretel Ehrlich (2017). “Heart Mountain: A Novel”, p.38, Open Road Media

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• Identity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light. But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested? In the darkness or the twinkle?

  Sergio Chejfec

  Stars, Mean, Light

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• I believe, in spite of all, in truth's victory. I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty.

  Henri Barbusse

  Country, Believe, Men

  Henri Barbusse (1919). “Light”

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• Believe me, I grow daily more convinced that the atmosphere is an inexhaustible source of countless beauties. It is up to we artists to learn, hour by hour, to penetrate itto understand about Distance, to know the Air and space, which is never still, but always vibrating and wiggling. The tiniest oscillation is, in itself, a motive for art - it is a new beauty: fluttering, creaking, disjointed, and buoyant.

  Mario de Sa-Carneiro

  Art, Distance, Believe

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• Sometimes, when I am tired of so many oscillations, I look for refuge in a word which I begin to love for itself. Resting in the heart of words, seeing clearly into the cell of a word, feeling that the word is the seed of a life, a growing dawn... The poet Vandercammen says all that in a line: "A word can be a dawn and even a sure shelter."

  Gaston Bachelard

  Life, Tired, Heart

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• The electroencephalogram represents a continuous curve with continuous oscillations in which... one can distinguish larger first order waves with an average duration of 90 milliseconds and smaller second order waves of an average duration of 35 milliseconds.

  Hans Berger

  Curves, Average, Order

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• The hypothesis of molecular vortices is defined to be that which assumes - that each atom of matter consists of a nucleus or central point enveloped by an elastic atmosphere, which is retained in its position by attractive forces, and that the elasticity due to heat arises from the centrifugal force of those atmospheres revolving or oscillating about their nuclei or central points.According to this hypothesis, quantity of heat is the vis viva of the molecular revolutions or oscillations.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Atmosphere, Atoms, Nucleus

  William John Macquorn Rankine, Peter Guthrie Tait (1881). “Miscellaneous Scientific Papers”

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• Mere numbers cannot bring out ... the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work. ... What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas! ... The experimenter judges what may be going on in [the subject's] mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!

  Alfred Binet

  Science, Reflection, Simple

  "La suggestibilite". Book by Alfred Binet, p. 119-120, 1900.

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• Deaths, births, and marriages, considering how much they are separately dependent on the freedom of the human will, should seem to be subject to no law according to which any calculation could be made beforehand of their amount; and yet the yearly registers of these events in great countries prove that they go on with as much conformity to the laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather.

  Immanuel Kant

  Country, Science, Law

  Immanuel Kant (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Immanuel Kant (Illustrated)”, p.812, Delphi Classics

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• CO2 emissions have been increasing, but the rise in air temperature stopped around 2001. Climate change is due in large part to naturally occurring oscillations.

  Syun-Ichi Akasofu

  Air, Climate, Temperature

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• Damn all false antitheses to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings who oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christ

  D. A. Carson

  Brother, Swings, Idols

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