“What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
"Jochanan Hakkadosh" (1883).
Source: Jocoseria
"A Few Notes on The Martian Chronicles", in Rhodomagnetic Digest (May 1950)
“What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
"Jochanan Hakkadosh" (1883).
Source: Jocoseria
Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…
Source: Law and Authority (1886), I
Context: Men who long for freedom begin the attempt to obtain it by entreating their masters to be kind enough to protect them by modifying the laws which these masters themselves have created!
But times and tempers are changed. Rebels are everywhere to be found who no longer wish to obey the law without knowing whence it comes, what are its uses, and whither arises the obligation to submit to it, and the reverence with which it is encompassed. The rebels of our day are criticizing the very foundations of society which have hitherto been held sacred, and first and foremost amongst them that fetish, law.
The critics analyze the sources of law, and find there either a god, product of the terrors of the savage, and stupid, paltry, and malicious as the priests who vouch for its supernatural origin, or else, bloodshed, conquest by fire and sword. They study the characteristics of law, and instead of perpetual growth corresponding to that of the human race, they find its distinctive trait to be immobility, a tendency to crystallize what should be modified and developed day by day.
Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor
Diana Cyr, in "Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity", p. 10
“Why read the crystal when he can read the book?”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician
Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 468, col. 319.
Speech in the House of Commons, 29 September 1949.
1940s
Context: It has been suggested, I think by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) that the most constructive suggestion he could make was to urge an early General Election and a return of a Tory Government in Britain. Why on earth should he want to prophesy what might result from a Tory Government when history has the record for him? Why read the crystal when he can read the book?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Source: Discipleship (1937), The Disciple and Unbelievers, p. 183.
John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic
As quoted in “When Writers Turn to Brave New Forms” by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times (24 March 1986)
“He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future.”
Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer
Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear