#ow

To a Vase "How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright. I break thee out of pure and simple spite The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise. I break thee if a bug upon thee sits. I break thee if I'm in a playful mood, And then I wrestle with the shiny bits. I break thee if I do not like my food. And if someone they shards together fits, I'll break thee once again when thou art glued. ↗

— Henry N. Beard

#elizabeth-barrett-browning #humor #art

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing. ↗

— Henry Hazlitt

#power-of-words #vocabulary #words #science

Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life’s journey and with Elemental’s Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before. ↗

— Luther E. Vann

#art #creativity #gift-books #jepson-center-for-the-arts #national-poetry-month

Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#knowledge #reason #science #science

They didn't understand what they were doing. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#humanity #science #understanding #science

He who replies to words of doubt doth put the light of knowledge out. ↗

— William Blake

#knowledge #science #science

We understand more than we know. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#science #understanding #wisdom #science

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth. ↗

— Jules Verne

#facts #knowledge #science #scientific-method #truth

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#knowledge #science #wisdom #science

...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge. ↗

— David Brin

#questions #religion #science #scientists #religion