“A man may be a thoroughgoing soldier enough on land; but put him in the foot ropes of the flying jibboom in a storm, and he is apt to cut a most ludicrous figure. Shift a physicist's foothold of Cartesian differential coordinates, suspend him over an abyss of non-Euclidean space, and he will kick sturdily. Poor policy this, for a missionary!”
"The Mathematical Theory of the Top" (April 8, 1898)
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Carl Barus 15
U.S. physicist 1856–1935Related quotes
Herbert N. Casson in: Sheet Metal Workers' International Association (1928) Sheet Metal Workers Journal p. 22
1920s-1940s

“Man is a rope, tied between beast and Superman--a rope over an abyss.”

On men in space, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

Goethe, translated by Thomas Carlyle (1824), cited in: Jürgen Habermas (1989) Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, English ed. p. 12

p, 125
Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)
“He who cuts off his nose takes poor revenge for a shame inflicted on him.”
Male ulciscitur dedecus sibi illatum, qui amputat nasum suum.
De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda (1189), cited from Mary Beth Rose (ed.) Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986) p. 29; translation from John Simpson The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 55.
A similar proverb, Qui son nez cope deshonore son vis, appears in the late 12th century chanson de geste Garin le Loheren, line 2877.