
Sparks
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Sparks
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Context: Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.
Sparks
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. xxxii
Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 10
“If there's nothing in here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?”
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 160
“Ultimately what we really are matters more than what other people think of us.”
Parliamentary Debates [Parliament of India] Pt.2 V.12-13 (1951); also quoted in Glorious Thoughts of Nehru (1964), p. 146
Context: Ultimately what we really are matters more than what other people think of us. One has to face the modern world with its good as well as its bad and it is better on the whole, I think, that we give even licence than suppress the normal flow of opinion. That is the democratic method. But having laid that down, still I would beg to say that there is a limit to the licence that one can allow, more so in times of great peril to the State.