xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Of all serious things, marriage is the most ludicrous.”

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro

De toutes les choses sérieuses, le mariage étant la plus bouffonne.
Act I, scene ix
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

“Everything ends with songs.”

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro

Tout finit par des chansons.
Mariage de Figaro, End. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 732-33.
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

“Calumniate, calumniate; there will always be something which sticks.”

Pierre Beaumarchais book The Barber of Seville

Calomniez, calomniez; il en reste toujours quelque chose.
Act III, scene xiii
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)

“Because you are a great lord, you believe that you are a great genius! You took the trouble to be born, no more. You remain an ordinary enough man!”

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro

Parce que vous êtes un grand seigneur, vous vous croyez un grand génie! … vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître, et rien de plus. Du reste homme assez ordinaire!
Act II, scene ii
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

“If censorship reigns, there cannot be sincere flattery, and none but little men are afraid of little writings.”

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro

Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur; et qu'il n'y a que les petits hommes qui redoutent les petits écrits.
Act V, scene iii
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

“Be commonplace and creeping, and you attain all things.”

Pierre Beaumarchais book The Barber of Seville

Médiocre et rampant, et l'on arrive à tout.
Act III, scene vii. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 759-62.
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)

“I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.”

Pierre Beaumarchais book The Barber of Seville

Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'être obligé d'en pleurer.
Act I, scene ii
Variant translations:
I quickly laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry.
I force myself to laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry.
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)

“That which is not worth speaking they sing.”

Pierre Beaumarchais book The Barber of Seville

Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante.
Act I, scene i. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 712-13.
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)

“As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

"Cathode rays" http://web.lemoyne.edu/~GIUNTA/thomson1897.html Philosophical Magazine, 44, 293 (1897).

“If, in the very intense electric field in the neighbourhood of the cathode, the molecules of the gas are dissociated and are split up, not into the ordinary chemical atoms, but into these primordial atoms, which we shall for brevity call corpuscles; and if these corpuscles are charged with electricity and projected from the cathode by the electric field, they would behave exactly like the cathode rays.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

"Cathode rays" http://web.lemoyne.edu/~GIUNTA/thomson1897.html Philosophical Magazine, 44, 293 (1897). <br class="br">Quotes eat me

“This example illustrates the differences in the effects which may be produced by research in pure or applied science. A research on the lines of applied science would doubtless have led to improvement and development of the older methods—the research in pure science has given us an entirely new and much more powerful method. In fact, research in applied science leads to reforms, research in pure science leads to revolutions, and revolutions, whether political or industrial, are exceedingly profitable things if you are on the winning side.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Cited from Lord Rayleigh, The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson (1943), p. 199.
Attributed

“I have described at some length the application of Positive Rays to chemical analysis; one of the main reasons for writing this book was the hope that it might induce others, and especially chemists, to try this method of analysis. I feel sure that there are many problems in chemistry, which could be solved with far greater ease by this than any other method. The method is surprisingly sensitive — more so than even that of spectrum analysis, requires an infinitesimal amount of material, and does not require this to be specially purified; the technique is not difficult if appliances for producing high vacua are available.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Rays of Positive Electricity (1913).
Quotes eat me

“We see from Lenard's table that a cathode ray can travel through air at atmospheric pressure a distance of about half a centimetre before the brightness of the phosphorescence falls to about half its original value. Now the mean free path of the molecules of air at this pressure is about 10-5 cm., and if a molecule of air were projected it would lose half its momentum in a space comparable with the mean free path. Even if we suppose that it is not the same molecule that is carried, the effect of the obliquity of the collisions would reduce the momentum to half in a short multiple of that path. Thus, from Lenard's experiments on the absorption of the rays outside the tube, it follows on the hypothesis that the cathode rays are charged particles moving with high velocities, that the size of the carriers must be small compared with the dimensions of ordinary atoms or molecules. The assumption of a state of matter more finely subdivided than the atom of an element is a somewhat startling one; but a hypothesis that would involve somewhat similar consequences—viz. that the so-called elements are compounds of some primordial element—has been put forward from time to time by various chemists.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Royal Institution Lecture (April 30, 1897) as quoted by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century http://books.google.com/books?id=CGJDAAAAIAAJ (1910). <br class="br">Quotes eat me

“I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

"Cathode rays" http://web.lemoyne.edu/~GIUNTA/thomson1897.html Philosophical Magazine, 44, 293 (1897). <br class="br">Quotes eat me <br class="br">Context: As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter.

“The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

A popular toast or slogan at J. J. Thomson's Cavendish Laboratory in the first years of the 1900s, as quoted in Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Volume 35 (1951), p. 251.
Attributed

“The difficulties which would have to be overcome to make several of the preceding experiments conclusive are so great as to be almost insurmountable.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Warning about the non-conclusiveness for the experimental foundation of electrostatic theory, in a footnote of the third edition of: [James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Vol.1, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1891, 37]
Quotes eat me

“Above ground,
in tropical flood, earth's greenery
stands with lifted arms, as if listening
to the beat of invisible pistons.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

Source: Selected Poems, Edited by Robert Hass, 1987 Harpercollins, p. 3.

“As when you were a child and some tremendous hurt
Was pulled over your head like a sack-
Glints of sunshine through the mesh
And the hum of the cherry trees.

But it doesn’t help, the great hurt
Covers head and torso and knees
And though you are able to move sometimes
Spring brings no happiness.

Yes, shimmering wool cap, pull it down over your face
Stare through the mesh.
Out on the bay, the rings of water multiply soundlessly
Green leaves darken the earth.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

As When You Were a Child.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

“We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

40.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

“I was, however, more interested in steam engines than in electric ones. In other words, I was more romantic than technical.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

29.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996