#design

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. ↗

— Freeman John Dyson

#intellectual #science #design

The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does. People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing. There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#humor #myth #wonder #design

...he wondered if maybe just occasionally the gods designed a woman fit for a king or a prince and then gave her to an ordinary man. Maybe they did such a thing once in a while, knowing an ordinary man would treasure her more, love her better. Maybe they even let him keep her - for a while. ↗

— Ellen O'Connell

#design

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast; So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again. ↗

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

#love #design

It is a paradox. Life is that way. God designed it that way. I believe I met him once. He was full of mischief. ↗

— Christopher Pike

#design

I don't know if you know it, J.B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#design

In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and even clothes, the discussion of fur is childish. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#chanel #childish #clothes #clothing #create

The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all--all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify and audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality--there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand?Here is the truth--actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#real-life #design

I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem. ↗

— Richard Buckminster Fuller

#process #quality #design

Sir Richard sighed. "Rid yourself of the notion that I cherish any villainous designs upon you person," he said. "I imagine I might well be your father. How old are you?" "I am turned seventeen." "Well, I am nearly thirty," said Sir Richard. Miss Creed worked this out. "You couldn't possibly be my father!" "I am far too drunk to solve arithmetical problems. Let is suffice that I have not the slightest intention of making love to you. ↗

— Georgette Heyer

#design