“It is not easy to devise a cure for such a state of things”
in a review of William Herschel's A Treatise on Sound, Quarterly Review, Vol. 44, No. 88 (January-February 1831), p. 476 http://books.google.com/books?id=742veo7MzswC&printsec=titlepage#PPA476,M1.
also quoted by Brewster himself in his Treatise on Optics http://books.google.com/books?id=opYAAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#PPR4,M1 and by Dionysius Lardner as frontispiece or presentation of his works (see for example: Popular lectures on science and art http://books.google.com/books?id=uZ9LAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA3, Cabinet Cyclopaedia http://books.google.com/books?id=5T43oHhqyxUC&pg=RA1-PT7).
Context: It is not easy to devise a cure for such a state of things (the declining taste for science). The most obvious remedy is to provide the educated classes with a series of works on popular and practical science, freed from mathematical symbols and technical terms, written in simple and perspicuous language, and illustrated by facts and experiments which are level to the capacity of ordinary minds.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
David Brewster 22
British astronomer and mathematician 1781–1868Related quotes
“Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.”
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters
“Culture is all the things and ideas ever devised by humans working and living together.”
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968), p. 19
“Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible.”
Amazon.com Interview: Larry Wall http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=7137.
Other
“The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.”
Travis McGee series, (1970)
“Things past recovery
Are hardly cured with exclamations.”
Barabas, Act I, scene ii
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)
“There are no such things as incurable, there are only things for which man has not found a cure.”
Speech (30 April 1954)
Colour in the Garden Country Life Library, George Newnes Ltd, London, 1908
Colour in the Garden
