in his Nobel Autobiography, edited by [Gösta Ekspong, Nobel Lectures in Physics 1991-1995, World Scientific, 1997, 9810226780, 161]
“Nature inclines to ill, through all her range,
And use is second nature, hard to change.”
Natura inchina al male, e viene a farsi
L'abito poi difficile a mutarsi.
Canto XXXVI, stanza 1 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
To My Fellow-Disciples at Saratoga Springs (1895)
Context: It is true— it has been already admitted— that the picture will not be universally recognized; but it has been suggested that the failure of recognition lies rather in the degeneracy of the faculty of seeing than in the misrepresentation of the vision to be seen. It may be also confessed that life often survives all the perversities of training. We cannot absolutely nullify the prodigality of nature, try as hard as we may. In spite of most careful management, untractable growths survive in the most provoking way, and intrude themselves into fields believed to be kept free from their presence. And sometimes it happens that the poor party managers have to accommodate themselves to the genius they curse.
Page 142
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen
XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Source: 1980s and later, Models of my life, 1991, p. 302.
No. 15
On the Interpretation of Nature (1753)
Context: There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
Source: Posthumous publications, Portrait of Manet by himself and his contemporaries (1960), p. 98.
