#scienc

It must be dawn, and the last breath went out of this body on the table - how long before? Irretrievably gone from this world, as dead as though she had lived a thousand years ago. Men have cut the isthmus of Panama and joined the two oceans; they have bored tunnels that run below rivers; built aluminum planes that fly from Frisco to Manila; sent music over the air and photographs over wires; but never, when the heartbeat of their own kind has once stopped, never when the spark of life has fled, have they been able to reanimate the mortal clay with that commonest yet most mysterious of all processes; the vital force. And this man thinks he can - this man alone, out of all the world's teeming billions! ("Jane Brown's Body") ↗

— Cornell Woolrich

#medicine #progress #science #death

Thirty-five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists and mathematicians. ↗

— Thomas E. Woods Jr.

#craters #jesuit #moon #science #science

The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. ↗

— George MacDonald

#conscience

The will of God or the lunacy of man - it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you wanted a good enough reason for most things. Or, alternatively (and he thought of it as he contemplated the small orderliness of the cabin against the window background of such frantic natural scenery), the will of man and the lunacy of God. ↗

— James Hilton

#religion #science-fiction #nature

I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important flexibility of our primate forebears, while most mammals had sacrificed it in specializing their digits. Carnivores run, stab, and scratch. My cat may manipulate me psychologically, but he'll never type or play the piano. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#cat #evolution #panda #science #thumb

My potential salvation...must remain an unswerving commitment to treat generality only as it emerges from little things that arrest us and open our eyes with "aha" -- while direct, abstract, learned assaults upon generalities usually glaze them over. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#writing #nature

Whenever the conviction of God’s Spirit comes there is the softening of the whole nature to obey; but if the obedience is not instant there will come a metallic hardening and a corrupting of the guidance of God. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#obedience #nature

Le regard analytique et le regard intuitif sur la vie ne peuvent s'harmoniser dans un même être que dans la mesure où le premier est subordonné au second. C'est du second, et notamment du sentiment de beauté et de compassion qu'il enferme, que découle le sens de la totalité de même que celui des équilibres et de la limite. Le regard intuitif est la condition de la sagesse sans laquelle le regard analytique peut conduire à des excès suicidaires. L'analyse des phénomènes donne de la puissance sur eux, elle permet de dominer la nature, mais elle n'enferme aucune indication quant aux limites qu'il convient d'assigner à cette puissance. ↗

— James E. Lovelock

#ecology #gaia #science #nature

You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body. ↗

— Richard Selzer

#medical #medicine #passion #pathology #science

Energy is the universal language of Nature ↗

— Joey Lawsin

#nature