All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced — that without intelligence we should be Brutes — but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.
George Henry Lewes
In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect — its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions — its purpose being pleasure.
George Henry Lewes
In the development of the great series of animal organisms, the Nervous System assumes more and more of an imperial character.
George Henry Lewes
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
(Remark after being incarcerated in Bedlam for five years.)
Nathaniel Lee
The stately ship is seen no more,
The fragile skiff attains the shore;
And while the great and wise decay,
And all their trophies pass away,
Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme,
Still floats above the wrecks of Time.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT.
I.
THE Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
II.
Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III.
“Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dinèd on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Edward Lear
That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.
Admiral William D. Leahy comment on the U.S. Atomic Bomb Project, to President Harry S. Truman in 1945
The Atomic Age began at exactly 5.30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 15, 1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico. And just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. … At first it was a giant column that soon took the shape of a supramundane mushroom.
William L. Laurence on the first atomic explosion in New Mexico, 16 Jul 1945, New York Times (26 Sep 1945).
Cold on Canadian hills or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;
Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years,—
The child of misery, baptized in tears.
John Langhorne
Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one the stars.
Frederick Langbridge