19th-century Polymath Quotes

Rabindranath Tagore

Paul de Lagarde

John Pentland Mahaffy

Frederick W. Lanchester

The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

Rabindranath Tagore

Never tell a story because it is true: tell it because it is a good story.

John Pentland Mahaffy

What was most repulsive at the meetings was the stench of the guild, which assailed me everywhere: intellectual proletariat, that labors on its humdrum articles in the sweat of its brow, that does not know that science is to make one free and happy.

Paul de Lagarde

Why should we limit by dogma or otherwise man's liberty to select his food and drink?...[T]he great practical rule of life in regard of human diet will not be found in enforcing limitation of the sources of food which Nature has abundantly provided.

Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet

The fighting strength of a force may be broadly defined as proportional to the square of its numerical strength multiplied by the fighting value of its individual units.

Frederick W. Lanchester