Dionysius Lardner Quotes

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In this science the illustrations and examples are not confined in their effect merely to the practice they afford in the analytical art, but [...] they also store the mind with independent geometrical and physical knowledge. Besides, it should be considered, that the only effectual method of impressing abstract formulae and rules upon the memory, and, indeed, of making them fully and clearly apprehended by the understanding, is by examples of their practical application.

Dionysius Lardner
The beginnings of science have often the appearance of chance. A felicitous accident throws a certain natural fact under the notice of an inquiring and philosophic mind. Attention is awakened and investigation provoked. Similar phenomena under varied circumstances are eagerly sought for; and if in the natural course of events they do not present themselves, circumstances are designedly arranged so as to bring about their production. The seeds of science are thus sown, and soon begin to germinate.

Dionysius Lardner
Men might as well project a voyage to the moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean.

Dionysius Lardner
To compare, to classify, to generalize, seem to be instinctive propensities peculiar to man. They separate him from inferior animals by a wide chasm.

Dionysius Lardner
It is astonishing, in this age of the diffusion of knowledge, how susceptible the public mind is of excitement on any topic, the principles of which do not lie absolutely on the surface of the most ordinary course of elementary education.

Dionysius Lardner
That the infinitude of space should exist without a purpose, unoccupied by any works of creation, is plainly incompatible with all our notions of the character and attributes of the Author of the universe, whether derived from the voice of revelation or from the light of nature.

Dionysius Lardner
Nature has raised the curtain of futurity, and displayed before him [Man] the succession of her decrees, so far as they effect the physical universe, for countless ages to come; and the revelations of which she has made him the instrument, are supported and verified by a never-ceasing train of predictions fulfilled.

Dionysius Lardner