Substance Quotes - Page 21

There are few substance to which it yields interest, when it is considered how very intimately the knowledge and properties and uses of iron is connected with human civilization.

George Fownes

Knowledge, Science, Civilization

George Fownes (1845). “Elementary Chemistry: Theoretical and Practical”, p.224

7 Copy quote

Show source
In its most primitive form, life is, therefore, no longer bound to the cell, the cell which possesses structure and which can be compared to a complex wheel-work, such as a watch which ceases to exist if it is stamped down in a mortar. No, in its primitive form life is like fire, like a flame borne by the living substance;-like a flame which appears in endless diversity and yet has specificity within it;-which can adopt the form of the organic world, of the lank grass-leaf and of the stem of the tree.

Martinus Beijerinck

Life, Science, Fire

4 Copy quote
The physiological combustion theory takes as its starting point the fundamental principle that the amount of heat that arises from the combustion of a given substance is an invariable quantity-i.e., one independent of the circumstances accompanying the combustion-from which it is more specifically concluded that the chemical effect of the combustible materials undergoes no quantitative change even as a result of the vital process, or that the living organism, with all its mysteries and marvels, is not capable of generating heat out of nothing.

Robert Mayer

Life, Change, Independent

4 Copy quote
[Pitchblende] consists of a peculiar, distinct, metallic substance. Therefore its former denominations, Pechblende, pitch-iron-ore, &c. are no longer applicable, and must be supplied by another more appropriate name. I have chosen that of Uranium, as a kind of memorial, that the chemical discovery of this new metal happened in the period of astronomical discovery of the new planet Uranus.

Martin Heinrich Klaproth

Science, Discovery, Names

"Analytical Essays towards Promoting the Chemical Knowledge of Mineral Substances" by Martin Heinrich Klaproth, London: Cadell & Davies, 1801.

10 Copy quote

Show source
In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field.

Alexander Fleming

Science, Discovery, Deep Thought

85 Copy quote
This investigation has yielded an unanticipated result that reaction of cyanic acid with ammonia gives urea, a noteworthy result in as much as it provides an example of the artificial production of an organic, indeed a so-called animal, substance from inorganic substances.

Friedrich Wohler

Science, Animal, Discovery

9 Copy quote
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

Gottfried Leibniz

Philosophical, Simple, Influence

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.219, Hackett Publishing

4 Copy quote

Show source
The sum and substance of my teaching is this: Don't be dishonest to your vital breath; worship that only, abide in that only, accept it as yourself. And when you worship in this manner, it can lead you anywhere, to any heights- this is the quintessence of my talks.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Spiritual, Wisdom, Teaching

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (2011). “The Ultimate Medicine: Dialogues with a Realized Master”, p.199, North Atlantic Books

26 Copy quote

Show source
For the powers of our mind, life, and body are bound to their own limitations, and however high they may rise or however widely expand, they cannot rise beyond them. But still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down a Supramental Light, Truth, and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot do. If mind cannot by effort become what is beyond mind, Supermind can descend and transform mind into its own substance.

Sri Aurobindo

Powerful, Men, Light

Sri Aurobindo (2016). “The Hour Of God: Art of living”, p.56, editionNEXT.com

68 Copy quote

Show source
...Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents.

Don Kates

Gun, Law, People

7 Copy quote
Like taxes, radioactivity has long been with us and in increasing amounts; it is not to be hated and feared, but accepted and controlled. Radiation is dangerous, let there be no mistake about that-but the modern world abounds in dangerous substances and situations too numerous to mention. ... Consider radiation as something to be treated with respect, avoided when practicable, and accepted when inevitable.

Ralph Lapp

Hate, Mistake, Long

4 Copy quote
In the etheric body are centered the forces animating man's physical vehicle, so disease is evidenced in the etheric before it manifests in the physical. The etheric, composed of finer, more attenuated substances than the physical, is corresponding amenable to vibratory influences. It is upon the former that harmony and rhythm have the most potent effect. Good music readjusts its molecular structure in accordance with the original divine plan, the archetype, and refines and accentuates it's vibratory currents. All forms of beauty and harmony increase this regenerating process.

Corinne Heline

Inspiration, Men, Body

21 Copy quote
That special substance according to whose mass and degree of development all the creatures of this world take rank in the scale of creation, is not bone, but brain.

Hugh Miller

Science, Brain, Special

Hugh Miller, Louis Agassiz (1859). “The Foot-prints of the Creator: Or, The Asterolepis of Stromness”, p.160

8 Copy quote

Show source
We live in a glass-soaked civilization, but as for the bird in the Chinese proverb who finds it so difficult to discover air, the substance is almost invisible to us. To use a metaphor drawn from glass, it may be revealing for us to re-focus, to stop looking through glass, and let our eyes dwell on it for a moment to contemplate its wonder.

Alan Macfarlane

Eye, Science, Civilization

Alan MacFarlane, Gerry Martin (2011). “The Glass Bathyscaphe: How Glass Changed the World”, p.4, Profile Books

5 Copy quote

Show source
I have a dream, and a plan, to combine the commercial possibilities of Valentine's Day with the substance and meaning of black history month. I call it: Blackentine's Day.

Mo Rocca

Funny, Dream, Valentine

7 Copy quote
A drug is a substance which, if injected into a rabbit, produces a paper.

Otto Loewi

Science, Drug, Rabbits

8 Copy quote
So much for the crusade against drugs . . . all America is actually doing is consolidating its position as the biggest dealer in addictive and lethal substances on the planet, waging war on all rivals, whether they take the form of the Thai domestic tobacco industry or the Colombian cocaine cartels.

Alexander Cockburn

War, America, Drug

10 Copy quote
In fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy exists after it leaves one body and before it reaches the other ... and if we admit this medium as an hypothesis, I think it ought to occupy a prominent place in our investigations, and that we ought to endeavour to construct a mental representation of all the details of its action, and this has been my constant aim in this treatise.

James Clerk Maxwell

Science, Thinking, Details

13 Copy quote
We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance-algae... We could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.

Barack Obama

Oil, America, Energy

Barack Obama's speech on Energy at University of Miami in Miami, Florida, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. February 23, 2012.

68 Copy quote

Show source
Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.

Baruch Spinoza

Law, Essence, Ethics

8 Copy quote
Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
They are but beggars that can count their worth;
But my true love is grown to such excess,
I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.

William Shakespeare

Conceited, Matter, Rich

"Romeo et Juliette: tragédie".

20 Copy quote

Show source
As a result of continuous work with these highly toxic substances, our minds were so numbed that we no longer had any scruples about the whole thing. Anyway, our enemies had by now adopted our methods and as they became increasingly successful in this mode of warfare we were no longer exclusively the aggressors, but found ourselves more and more at the receiving end.

Otto Hahn

War, Successful, Mind

Otto Hahn (1970). “My life: the autobiography of a scientist”, MacDonald

17 Copy quote

Show source
Many different substances, as distinct to the practiced eye as stone and wood, go to the making of a novel, and it is necessary to see them for what they are.

Percy Lubbock

Writing, Eye, Different

Percy Lubbock (1921). “The Craft of Fiction”

4 Copy quote

Show source
The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

Edward Weston

Photography, Steel, Flesh

Sarah M. Lowe, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Barbican Art Gallery (2004). “Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: the Mexico years”, Merrell Publishers

7 Copy quote

Show source
What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.

Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness, Clouds, Broken

Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

4 Copy quote

Show source

You May Also Like Quotes On:

Substance Abuse