Prodigious Quotes - Page 4

• There are estimated to be fewer that 50 prodigious savants worldwide. If we were brought together, it would be disappointing in the sense of us having different abilities. One thing that would make me feel united with them would be the sense of us having grown up in isolation.

  Daniel Tammet

  Together, Different, Would Be

  "This much I know" by John Hind, www.theguardian.com. January 31, 2009.

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• What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?

  Christiaan Huygens

  Stars, Distance, Animal

  "Cosmotheoros". Book by Christiaan Huygens, Book 2, pp. 150-151, as quoted in the English translation "The Celestial Worlds Discover'd" (1722), 1695.

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• Paris is a sum total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. All this prodigious city is an epitome of dead and living manners and customs. He who sees Paris, seems to see all history through with the sky and constellations in the intervals.

  Victor Hugo

  Race, Sky, Cities

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Marius”, p.14

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• The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Effort, Incapacity

  Franz Kafka (1970). “The Trial”

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• ...it is prodigious the quantity of good that may be done by one man if he will make a business of it.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Men, Done, May

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin (1817). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin ...”, p.120

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• I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 7

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• If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease.

  Mark Twain

  Christian, Voting, Tickets

  Mark Twain (1992). “Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1891-1910”

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• At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C.E. and for whom even ancient man had a lively admiration.

  Svante Arrhenius

  Men, Sight, Firsts

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• From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring. But not only that: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  New York, Freedom, July

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• Enchanted partnership begins with the conscious understanding, on the part of two people, that the purpose of their relationship is not so much material as spiritual, and the internal skills demanded by it are prodigious.

  Marianne Williamson

  Love, Inspirational, Forgiveness

  Marianne Williamson (2013). “Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships”, p.289, Simon and Schuster

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• From a pound of iron, that costs little, a thousand watch-springs can be made, whose value becomes prodigious. The pound you have received from the Lord,--use it faithfully.

  Robert Schumann

  Spring, Iron, Watches

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• It is a confession that we do not have such a prodigious head as is required to answer the question what is happening, that we cannot get on top of what is happening, that we are stuck in the middle of it, in medias res, inter-esse, amazing and bewildered. We cannot soar over what is happening with philosophy's eagle-wings. What's happening has clipped our wings.

  John D. Caputo

  Philosophy, Eagles, Wings

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• The Unheavenly Chorus is the definitive study of participatory inequality in America. Marshaling prodigious evidence, the authors show how money not only buys influence directly but also affects associations that are supposed to be democratic antidotes to concentrated wealth. A monumental achievement of careful scholarship, this book offers real knowledge of how politics actually operates.

  Robert Kuttner

  Real, Book, America

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• The study of letters is the study of the operation of human force, of human freedom and activity; the study of nature is the study of the operation of non-human forces, of human limitation and passivity. The contemplation of human force and activity tends naturally to heighten our own force and activity; the contemplation of human limits and passivity tends rather to check it. Therefore the men who have had the humanistic training have played, and yet play, so prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their prodigious ignorance of the universe.

  Matthew Arnold

  Education, Ignorance, Science

  Matthew Arnold (1868). “Schools and Universities on the Continent”, p.260, Macmillan

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• I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child.

  Lynne Stewart

  Hurt, Children, Add

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Exercise, Men, Cities

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1839). “Democracy in America”, p.289

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