#bse

I confidently affirm that the greater part of those who are supposed to have died of gout, have died of the medicine rather than the disease - a statement in which I am supported by observation. ↗

— Thomas Sydenham

#am #confidently #died #disease #gout

The absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these people the agile walk of the wild animal, while the general simplicity of their lives has given them many other points of physical perfection. ↗

— John Millington Synge

#agile #animal #boot #europe #general

Greater things are believed of those who are absent. ↗

— Tacitus

#believed #greater #things #those #who

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour. ↗

— Amy Tan

#chords #concert #first #first time #get

Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#emotional #more #much #murky #observation

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. ↗

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

#absence #consist #does #his #life

A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location for the next swarm. Bees do a lot of close observing of other bees; maybe they know what follows stinging and do it anyway. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#anyway #argue #bees #best #calculate

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#around #beast #begin #bits #calculating

Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless, obsessive preoccupation with the parts. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#anxiety #apprehension #endless #forever #may

Television probably has become the most evocative, widely observed signpost we have. ↗

— Robert Adams

#evocative #most #observed #probably #television