Source: "The Flaw in Paganism" in Death and Taxes (1931)
“My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”
Letter to Johannes Kepler (1610), as quoted in The Crime of Galileo (1955) by Giorgio De Santillana
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Galileo Galilei 70
Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer 1564–1642Related quotes
“The clown may be the source of mirth, but - who shall make the clown laugh?”
Source: Nights at the Circus
“I shall laugh my bitter laugh.”
Epitaph on Gogol's tombstone
Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage
Shylock, Act III, scene i.
Source: The Merchant of Venice (1596–7)
Context: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Last recorded words, to his grand-children and his servants, as quoted in The National Preacher (1845) by Austin Dickinson, p. 192.
Sweet Thing
Song lyrics, Astral Weeks (1969)
The Fine Old English Gentleman (1841)