Striking Thoughts

                                                                                                             February 7, 2015
What I was looking for were those rare moments when, using material at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied. Ideally the aparatus itself would be a thing of beauty, with polished wood, brass, shining black ebonite. More important would be the beauty of design and the execution, the cleanness of the lines of thought.
                    George Johnson, The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments



                                                                                                             May 13, 2013
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.        
                   Ralph Waldo Emerson                                                                                                


                                                                                                              March 21, 2013
That's the thing about nature; there's so much of it.
                   Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, Downton Abbey 3/9

                                                                                                             January 26, 2013
Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools.  They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obscure.
                   J. Henri Fabre,  The Life of the Fly

                                                                                                                January 24, 2013
   Claudia said, "But, Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day. We did even at the museum."
   "No," I answered, "I don't agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you must accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them.  It's hallow."
   Both children were quiet, and I continued. "I've gathered a lot of facts about Michelangelo and Angel.  And I've let them grow inside me for a long time. Now I feel that I know.  That's enough for that."
                   E. L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler


                                                                                                                    October 26, 2012
We are so accustomed to take wonders as a matter of course, mere everyday event,
that it doesn't occur to us to be surprised.
                  Charlotte Mason    
                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                    October 14, 2012
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
                  G.K. Chesterton

                                                                                                                    September 24, 2012
Equipped with his five senses,
man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.
                  Edwin Powell Hubble,  The Nature of Science, 1959


                                                                                                                    September 22, 2012
Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly,
but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.
                   Mary Kay Ash


                                                                                                                    September 19, 2012
Ladybugs, perhaps because they are so cute, the pandas of the insect world,
became something of a symbol.
                    Sue Hubbell, broadside from the other orders - a book of bugs