Quotes about interval (176 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Letter http://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4801040.htm to George W. Eveleth, Jan. 4, 1848.

“As there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises from too great confidence of inexperience; you trust a man and think him altogether true and good and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially within the circle of his most trusted friends, as he deems them, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. …The reason is that a man, having to deal with other men, has no knowledge of them; for if he had knowledge he would have known the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Men , Hate , World , Faith

“That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

People , Drink , Night

“Paddy and I had scarcely a wink of sleep, for there was a man near us who had some nervous trouble, shell-shock perhaps, which made him cry out 'Pip!' at irregular intervals. It was a loud, startling noise, something like the toot of a small motor-horn. You never knew when it was coming, and it was a sure preventer of sleep…. he must have kept ten or twenty people awake every night. He was an example of the kind of thing that prevents one from ever getting enough sleep when men are herded as they are in these lodging houses.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 29

Men , People , Sleep , Housing

“l'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it. … I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.”

Charlie Parker (1920–1955) American jazz saxophonist and composer

On his personal stylistic breakthrough, quoted in Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955) edited by Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, . p 354

Thinking , Change , Time

“No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 173.

Life , Death , Pleasure , Feeling

“We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval [15 years]; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

"The War Speeches of William Pitt", Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 16
Speech in the House of Commons, 17 February 1792, introducing the Budget. His prediction was a vain hope.

Peace , History , Time , Country

“The transition of the subject-object relation to that of the I-Thou implies a passage of consciousness to a new sphere of existence, viz, the interval, betweenness or Zwichen; and this is a passage from thought to Umfassung.”

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) French philosopher

The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 73

Relation ships

“I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Night

“Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Source: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Sense , Time

“The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death itself can part true friends.”

John Cassian (360–435) Christian monk and theologian

Death , Chance , Time , Parting

“The so-called "peace" is an interval between wars.”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

9
"The Epigrams of Lusin"

War , Peace

“I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.
Then people would see!
A strong naked arm – a tanned powerful neck a young woman rests her head on the arching chest.
She closes her eyes and listens with open and quivering lips to the words he whispers into her long flowing hair.
I should paint that image just as I saw it – but in the blue haze.
Those two at that moment, no longer merely themselves, but simply a link in the chain binding generation to generation.
People should understand the significance, the power of it. They should remove their hats like they do in church.
There should be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting.
There would be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved.
I felt impelled – it would be easy. The flesh would have volume – the colours would be alive.
There was an interval. The music stopped. I was a little sad. I remembered how many times I had had similar thoughts – and that once I had finished the painting – they had simply shaken their heads and smiled.
Once again I found myself out on the Boulevard des Italiens.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

written in Saint Cloud, 1889
Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 120 -121
1880 - 1895

Love , Women , People , Sadness

“My God, my God, who am I attending to? How many am I? Who is me? What is this interval between me and me?”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 201
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Meu Deus, meu Deus, a quem assisto? Quantos sou? Quem é eu? O que é este intervalo que há entre mim e mim?

God

“And so, supposing that light impinging on a refracting or reflecting ethereal superficies puts it into a vibrating motion, that physical superficies being by the perpetual applause of rays always kept in a vibrating motion, and the ether therein continually expanded and compressed by turns, if a ray of light impinge on it when it is much compressed, I suppose it is then too dense and stiff to let the ray through, and so reflects it; but the rays that impinge on it at other times, when it is either expanded by the interval between two vibrations or not too much compressed and condensed, go through and are refracted.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

"Hypothesis explaining the Properties of Light" (1675)

Light , Time

“… the republic of creative minds: each giant calling to his brother through the desolate intervals of time. And undisturbed by the wanton noises of the dwarfs that creep past beneath them, their high spirit-converse continues.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 32

Time , Past

“Europe has its history, often tragic, though at intervals consoling. But to speak of any universally recognized national rights or that these rights have played any part in its history, is to play with the powers of public credulity. Always the first duty of a state has been its safety; the pledge of its safety, its power; and the limits of its power, that intelligence of which each has been made the depository. When the great powers have proclaimed any other principle, it has been only for their own purposes, and the smaller powers have never received any benefit from it.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

History , Intelligence , Universe , Parting

“The term fuzzy logic is used in this paper to describe an imprecise logical system, FL, in which the truth-values are fuzzy subsets of the unit interval with linguistic labels such as true, false, not true, very true, quite true, not very true and not very fake, etc…. As a consequence, the truth tables and the rules of inference in fuzzy logic are (i) inexact and (ii) dependent on the meaning associated with the primary truth-value true as well as the modifiers very quite.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Lotfi Asker Zadeh, George Jiri Klir, Bo Yuan (1996) Fuzzy Sets, Fuzzy Logic, and Fuzzy Systems: Selected Papers. p. 238
1990s

Truth , Dependency , Falseness

“It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.”

Herodotus book Histories

Book 8, Ch. 98
variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
The Histories

Men , Horse , Speed

“You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Context: How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.

Dreams , Night

“I realize that all society rests upon force. But all the great creative actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the front. These intervals are what matter. I want them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them "civilization".”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)
Context: I realize that all society rests upon force. But all the great creative actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the front. These intervals are what matter. I want them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them "civilization". Some people idealize force and pull it into the foreground and worship it, instead of keeping it in the background as long as possible. I think they make a mistake, and I think that their opposites, the mystics, err even more when they declare that force does not exist. I believe that it exists, and that one of our jobs is to prevent it from getting out of its box. It gets out sooner or later, and then it destroys us and all the lovely things which we have made. But it is not out all the time, for the fortunate reason that the strong are so stupid.

“When our mind is tranquil, there will be an occasional pause to its feverish activities, there will be a let-go, and it is only then in the interval between two thoughts that a flash of UNDERSTANDING — understanding, which is not thought — can take place.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 43
Context: Liberate yourself from concepts and see the truth with your own eyes. — It exists HERE and NOW; it requires only one thing to see it: openness, freedom — the freedom to be open and not tethered by any ideas, concepts, etc. … When our mind is tranquil, there will be an occasional pause to its feverish activities, there will be a let-go, and it is only then in the interval between two thoughts that a flash of UNDERSTANDING — understanding, which is not thought — can take place.

Understanding

“The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge which may be made public to the world. Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and full and accurate information as to their operations should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)
Context: The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity. In the interest of the public, the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business. Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke. What further remedies are needed in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be determined after publicity has been obtained, by process of law, and in the course of administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge which may be made public to the world. Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and full and accurate information as to their operations should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.

World , Law , Knowledge , Dependency

“Electric current, after passing into the earth travels to the diametrically opposite region of the same and rebounding from there, returns to its point of departure with virtually undiminished force. The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord. To traverse the entire distance of about twenty-five thousand miles, equal to the circumference of the globe, the current requires a certain time interval, which I have approximately ascertained. In yielding this knowledge, nature has revealed one of its most precious secrets, of inestimable consequence to man. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself, had electrically designed this planet just for the purpose of enabling us to achieve wonders which, before my discovery, could not have been conceived by the wildest imagination.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Time , Imagination , Nature , Knowledge

“From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent:…After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new.”

Mark Twain book Letters from the Earth

Letters from the Earth (1909)

Time , Age

“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide … both opposing forces are holy. It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonize these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action.

Life

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.”

Salvador Plascencia The People of Paper

Source: The People of Paper

Missing You , Good Night , Thinking

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"War Shrines"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Birthday , Death , Birth

“THE VOICE: (to BEAUTY) Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Life , Beauty

“Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art”

Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Source: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Art , Thinking , Universe , Time

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Time

“It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Time , Night

“there isn't enough of anything
as long as we live. But at intervals
a sweetness appears and, given a chance
prevails.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Ultramarine: Poems

Appearance , Chance

“The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 39 (January 13, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)

Love , Life , Joy

“The modern young man,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'is a congenital idiot and wants a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Very Good, Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

Strong

“Do we really have to look these chords up in Forte's catalog in order to find a name for them? Another theorist [Christopher Hasty] assures us that, 'Allen Forte's perceptive interpretation…accounts for an essential quality of this mysteriously pulsating music. The eighth-note chords of the flute and clarinets form alternately, with the sustaining oboes and horns, the six-tone sonorities labeled A and B. The sonorities A and B are both representatives of the same set class (6-Z19) and are thus made up of precisely the same intervals. As Forte points out, "There is a flucuation of pitch-class content while interval content remains constant."' 'A fluctuation of pitch-class content while interval content remains constant' is what the rest of us have always known as 'a transposition.'”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Page 42
The Listening Composer

Music

“The intelligence recedes, no more a tool of learning - because knowledge is based on experience - but a tool of the outside world it is deprived of knowing. It tries to contact other minds by telepathy; it becomes the Ancestor. Words and Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

World , Intelligence , Knowledge , Learning

“…absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i. e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal…”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Departure , Time

“The debate regarding which individual factor, among the three key factors producing the environmental crisis, causes more damage - the size of the human population on the planet, excessive consumption of resources or unequal/ unjust distribution of resources among countries [the wealthier countries consume much more resources than poorer countries] - is like a debate about which contributes more to a triangle, the base or the ribs of the triangle. You can not separate the three factors. If we analyze the numbers over a relatively longer time interval, we will conclude that the size of the population has a bigger impact than consumption. On the other hand, consumption and unequal distribution are also important aspects. If we do not change these three factors all at the same time, the quality of our life will change dramatically. Today humanity is delivering a serious blow to nature, but it is clear that nature will deliver the final blow.”

Paul R. Ehrlich (1932) American scientist and environmentalist

Paul Ehrlich, People should produce far fewer children, or expect the worst http://www.haaretz.co.il/1.1875624 (Dec. 2012), Haaretz

Life , Nature , Change , Time

“Under the guidance of the Reich, Europe would speedily have become unified. Once the Jewish poison had been eradicated, unification would have been an easy matter. France and Italy, each defeated in turn at an interval of a few months by the two Germanic Powers, would have been well out of it. Both would have had to renounce their inappropriate aspirations to greatness. At the same time they would have had to renounce their pretensions in North Africa and the Near East; and that would have allowed Europe to pursue a bold policy of friendship towards Islam.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

4 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Friendship , Time

“The Law of Time and Chaos: In a process, the time interval between salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands of contracts along with the amount of chaos.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999)

Law , Nature , Change , Time

“There were two problems which had to be faced. One was spatial and the other methodological. In the first case I had to do something about relational painting, i. e. the balancing of the various parts of the painting with and against each other. The obvious answer was symmetry – make it the same all over. The question still remained, though, of how to do this in depth. A symmetrical image or configuration symmetrically placed on a open ground is not balanced out in the illusionistic space. The solution I arrived at, and there are probably quite a few, although I only know of one other, color density, forces illusionistic space out of the painting at constant intervals by using a regulated pattern. The remaining problem was simply to find a method of paint application which followed and complemented the design solution. This was done by using the house painters technique and tools.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, The Pratt lecture (1960), p. 114

Color , Question , Problem , Parting

“When the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth through all the confusion of tradition and the caricature of institutions. Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of God have, from time to time, walked among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History

Men , God , Truth , Youth

“…introduce the auxiliary concept of first-signal…defined as the fastest message carrier between any two points in space. We now send a first-signal from P, calling the event of departure E1… The event of its arrival at P' is called E'. Simultaneously with the arrival of this signal, another first signal is sent from P'. The arrival of this signal at P is the event E2. …the time interval between E1 and E2 is coordinated to the event E', [E1 is earlier than E' and E2 is later than E'] and every event of this time interval except for the endpoints is inderterminate as to the time order relative to E.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Departure , Time

“All art that is expressive has to be illusionistic. The raw material out of which art is built is not necessarily in itself potent; you must transform it. Contours, tactility, touch, color, intervals, that's all part of the concreteness of art. You have to make the concreteness expressive. That way you don't cater to taste. You resist sentimentality. Things in a picture can't remind you too much of anything else. You have to resist all that.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 24
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Art , Color , Way , Parting

“Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 97

War , Change , Time

“Your system was liable to periodical convulsions…business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 22.

Business

“The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Source: Mac Flecknoe (1682), l. 19–24.

Soul , Sense , Night

“From the works now extant of Aristotle, and from the system of Pythagoras… we might certainly infer that these philosophers considered the agents of change now operating in Nature, as capable of bringing about in the lapse of ages a complete revolution; and the Stagyrite even considers occasional catastrophes happening at distant intervals of time as part of the regular and ordinary course of Nature.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 17
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Age , Nature , Distant , Change

“You see the rivers running east. Then you see mountains rise. Rivers run off them to the west. Mountains come up like waves. They crest, break, and spread themselves westward. When they are spent, there is an interval of time, and then again you see the rivers running eastward. You look over the shoulder of the painter and you see all that in the landscape. You see it if first you have seen it in the rock. The composition is almost infinitely less than the sum of its parts, the flickers and glimpses of a thousand million years.”

John McPhee (1931) American writer

In Suspect Terrain (1983), reprinted in Annals of the Former World (2000) page 209.

Mountain , Time , Parting

“It is picked out from numbers progressing in continuous proportion. Of continuous progressions, an arithmetical is one which proceeds by equal intervals; a geometrical one which advances by unequal and proportionally increasing or decreasing intervals. Arithmetical progressions: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, &c.; or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, &c, Geometrical progressions: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, &c.; or 243, 81, 27, 9, 3, 1.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms (1889)

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton book Paul Clifford

Probably the most parodied and ridiculed opening line in literature. It is the inspiration for a satirical prize, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Used by Charles M. Schultz in the Peanuts cartoons.
Paul Clifford (1830)

Night

“Ahmad Shah Abdali in the year AH 1171 (AD 1757-58), came from the country of Kandahar to Hindastan, and on the 7th of Jumadal awwal of that year, had an interview with the Emperor ‘Ãlamgir II, at the palace of Shah-Jahanabad… After an interval of a month, he set out to coerce Raja Suraj Mal Jat, who from a distant period, had extended his sway over the province of Ãgra, as far as the environs of the city of Delhi. In three days he captured Balamgarh, situated at a distance of fifteen kos from Delhi… After causing a general massacre of the garrison he hastened towards Mathura, and having razed that ancient sanctuary of the Hindus to the ground, made all the idolaters fall a prey to his relentless sword…”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Mathura (Uttar Pradesh), Tarikh-i-Ibrahim Khan in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. VIII, pp. 264-65.

Distant , Country

“In the summer of 1930 my academic future, however, was not uppermost in my mind. I had been stricken by an acute attack of a disease which at regular intervals afflicts all mathematicians and, for that matter, all scientists: I became obsessed by a problem.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Prologue, How I Became a Mathematician, p. 1.
Enigmas Of Chance (1985)

Disease , Problem , Affliction , Future

“In the spring of the freshman year, the sophmore girls held what was called "The Baby Party" which all freshmen girls were compelled to attend. At this affair, the freshmen girls were questioned as to their misdemeanors and punished for their disobedience and rebellions. The baby party was so name because the freshman girls were required to dress as babies.
At the party; the freshmen girls were put through various students under command of sophomores. Upon one occasion, for instance, the freshman girls were led into a dark corridor where their eyes were blindfolded, and their arms were bound behind them. Only one freshman at a time was taken through this corridor along which sophomore guards were stationed at intervals. This arrangement was designed to impress the girls punished with the impossibility of escape from their captresses. After a series of harmless punishments, each girl was led into a large room where all the Junior and Senior girls were assembled. There she was sentenced to go through various exhibitions, supposed to be especially suitable to punish each particular girls failure to submit to discipline imposed by the upper class girl. The sophomore girls carried long sticks with which to enforce, if necessary, the stunts which the freshmen were required to preform. While the programme did not call for a series of pre-arranged physical struggles between individual girls…frequent rebellion of the freshman against the commands of their captresses and guards furnished the most exciting portion of the entertainment according to the report of a majority of the class girls.
Nearly all the sophomores reported excited pleasantness of captivation emotion throughout the party. The pleasantness of captivation response appeared to increase when they were obliged to overcome rebellious freshmen physically, or to preform the actions from which the captive girls strove to escape….
Female behavior also contains still more evidence than male behavior that captivation emotion is not limited to inter-sex relationships. The person of another girls seems to evoke from female subjects, under appropriate circumstances, filly as strong captivation response as does that of a male.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

as quoted in Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter comics, 1941-1948, pp. 64-65 by Noah Berlatsky.
The Emotions of Normal People (1928)

Sex , Behavior , Girl , Spring

“For those who are the inheritors of a noble estate and a high place in the world, it is a good thing to pause at intervals and consider by what favor of fortune and of ancestry their lines have fallen in such pleasant places. Thus to meditate upon that course of events, which has given them what they have and made them what they are, will tend to remind them how great is their debt and how little is their share of merit.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

World

“Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

cited in: Artscribe. Nr. 7; 13; 17-18 (1977). p. 36
The Shape of Time, 1982

Time , Past , Future

“The gazing crowd, of glittering State afraid,
Adore the Power their coward meanness made;
In war's short intervals, while regal shows
Still blind their reason and insult their woes.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)

War

“Logically, faith comes first, and love next; but in life they will spring up together in the soul; the interval which separates them is impalpable, and in every act of trust, love is present; and fundamental to every emotion of love to Christ is trust in Christ.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 237.

Love , Life , Faith , Soul

“The thing that struck me most was the way he stuck to the motif [in the 'Flag' and 'Target' paintings by Jasper Johns ]…. the idea of stripes – the rhythm and the interval – the idea of repetition. I began to think a lot about repetition.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

quote, 1960's
Quotes, 1960 - 1970
Source: The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, pp. 215-216

Way , Quotes , Idea , Thinking

“Poetry is creative expression; Prose is constructive expression. … by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking. … There is no time interval between the words and the thought when a real poet writes, both of them happen together, and both the thought and the word are Poetry.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes

Thinking , Time

“The achievement of such a change of register through a sequential progression is a familiar procedure in the music of the "common practice." The significant distinction is that where Berg subdivides the registral span into equal, i. e., cyclic, intervals, his tonal predecessors subdivide it, in changing register through sequential transference, into the unequal intervals of the diatonic scale. As I pointed out in my last lecture, however, the qualitative transformation in the language of music which we have experienced in our century has a long prehistory. Beginning with Schubert, we occasionally find normal diatonic functions questioned in changes of key that progress along the intervals of the whole-tone scale, or the diminished-7th chord, or the augmented triad. An even more radical example of a cyclic progression in a tonal composition is…from Wagner”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Die Walkure, Act III
Page 96
The Listening Composer

Music , Question , Change

“There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 1.

Music , Soul , Heart

“We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.”

W. Somerset Maugham The Constant Wife

The Constant Wife (1927)
Plays

Baby

“Books remained as in the eighteenth century, the source of life, and as they came out — Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, Tennyson, Macaulay, Carlyle, and the rest — they were devoured; but as far as happiness went, the happiest hours of the boy's education were passed in summer lying on a musty heap of Congressional Documents in the old farmhouse at Quincy, reading "Quentin Durward," "Ivanhoe," and "The Talisman," and raiding the garden at intervals for peaches and pears. On the whole he learned most then.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life , Books , Education , Boy

“As the years went by I found that at seven years intervals (until I was thirty-five) I had indications of the supervision and interest of this individual. Then in 1915 I discovered who He was and that other people know Him. From then on the relationship has become closer and closer until today I can, at will, contact Him. This willingness to be contacted on the part of a Master is only possible when a disciple is also willing never to avail himself of the opportunity except in moments of real emergency in world service.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter I, Part 2

People , World , Parting

“If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum. Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea , Time

“Although the [American] revolution grew out of economic and political causes, it represents primarily one of those costly and unfortunate internecine wars in which the Nordics have been prone to indulge at intervals for two or three thousand years, and which have done so much to weaken them as a race.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

War

“In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose.”

François Arago (1786–1853) French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician

Joseph Fourier, p. 411.
Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)

Science

“Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V

Business , Time

“"True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's Strange Story; "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria!”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Science , Time

“The theory of waves has been much simplified, and somewhat extended, and their motions have been illustrated by experiments… A similar method of reasoning has been applied to the circulation of the blood, to the propagation of sound, either in fluids or in solids, and to the vibrations of musical chords; the general principle of a velocity, corresponding to half the height of a certain modulus, being shown to be applicable to all these cases: and a connexion has been established between the sound to be obtained from a given solid, and its strength in resisting a flexure of any kind; or, in the case of ice and water, between the sound in a solid and the compressibility in a fluid state. The doctrine of sound and of sounding bodies in general has also received some new illustrations, and the theory of music and of musical intervals has been particularly discussed.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Music , Water

“We insist on self-roasting, by slow degrees, and at regular intervals, to show our contempt for experience, and to develop our chief virtue, which is obstinacy.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That a Burnt Child often Dreads the Fire".
Sketches from Life (1846)

“Like pictures, images seem to depict information about interval spatial extents. The scanning experiments support the claim that portions of images depict corresponding portions of the represented objects, and that the spatial relations between portions of the image index the spatial relations between the corresponding portions of the imaged objects.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 51

Support

“We do not mechanically connect the sensation of white with the idea of light, any more than we connect the sensation of black with the idea of darkness. We admit that a black jewel, even if of a dead black, may be more luminous than the white or pink satin of its case. Loving light, we refuse to measure it, and we avoid the geometrical ideas of the focus and the ray, which imply the repetition-contrary to the principle of variety which guides us-of bright planes and sombre intervals in a given direction. Loving colour, we refuse to limit it, and subdued or dazzling, fresh or muddy, we accept all the possibilities contained between the two extreme points of the spectrum, between the cold and the warm tone.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Du Cubisme (1912)

Love , Idea , Light , Dead

“As is known, scientific physics dates its existence from the discovery of the differential calculus. Only when it was learned how to follow continuously the course of natural events, attempts, to construct by means of abstract conceptions the connection between phenomena, met with success. To do this two things are necessary: First, simple fundamental concepts with which to construct; second, some method by which to deduce, from the simple fundamental laws of the construction which relate to instants of time and points in space, laws for finite intervals and distances, which alone are accessible to observation”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

can be compared with experience
Die partiellen Differentialgleichungen der mathematischen Physik (1882) as quoted by Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath's Quotation-book https://books.google.com/books?id=G0wtAAAAYAAJ (1914) p. 239

Law , Nature , Learning , Time

“The fate of the Statute of Uses is one of the most curious in legal history. Its secret and unavowed purpose, of securing the estates of the monasteries for the Crown, it accomplished. Its ostensible purpose, fortified by a wealth of hypocritical justification, it entirely failed to achieve. Not only were devises of lands, after a brief interval, put on a legal footing; but, as is well known, uses of lands as distinguished from legal estates, soon re-appeared in full vigour. Whilst in unforeseen directions, that statute worked havoc in the medieval system of conveyancing; and gradually modernized it out of existence.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter VII, New Interests In land, p. 99

Fate , Secret , History , Appearance

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech at Newton, Montgomeryshire (4 March 1972), from The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), pp. 57-8
1970s

Life , Death , People , World

“Mathematics is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to Human Affairs. In which last Respect, we may be said to receive from the Mathematics, the principal Delights of Life, Securities of Health, Increase of Fortune, and Conveniences of Labour: That we dwell elegantly and commodiously, build decent Houses for ourselves, erect stately Temples to God, and leave wonderful Monuments to Posterity: That we are protected by those Rampires from the Incursions of the Enemy; rightly use Arms, skillfully range an Army, and manage War by Art, and not by the Madness of wild Beasts: That we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea, and come to the designed Ports by the uncertain Impulse of the Winds: That we rightly cast up our Accounts, do Business expeditiously, dispose, tabulate, and calculate scattered 248 Ranks of Numbers, and easily compute them, though expressive of huge Heaps of Sand, nay immense Hills of Atoms: That we make pacifick Separations of the Bounds of Lands, examine the Moments of Weights in an equal Balance, and distribute every one his own by a just Measure: That with a light Touch we thrust forward vast Bodies which way we will, and stop a huge Resistance with a very small Force: That we accurately delineate the Face of this Earthly Orb, and subject the Oeconomy of the Universe to our Sight: That we aptly digest the flowing Series of Time, distinguish what is acted by due Intervals, rightly account and discern the various Returns of the Seasons, the stated Periods of Years and Months, the alternate Increments of Days and Nights, the doubtful Limits of Light and Shadow, and the exact Differences of Hours and Minutes: That we derive the subtle Virtue of the Solar Rays to our Uses, infinitely extend the Sphere of Sight, enlarge the near Appearances of Things, bring to Hand Things remote, discover Things hidden, search Nature out of her Concealments, and unfold her dark Mysteries: That we delight our Eyes with beautiful Images, cunningly imitate the Devices and portray the Works of Nature; imitate did I say? nay excel, while we form to ourselves Things not in being, exhibit Things absent, and represent Things past: That we recreate our Minds and delight our Ears with melodious Sounds, attemperate the inconstant Undulations of the Air to musical Tunes, add a pleasant Voice to a sapless Log and draw a sweet Eloquence from a rigid Metal; celebrate our Maker with an harmonious Praise, and not unaptly imitate the blessed Choirs of Heaven: That we approach and examine the inaccessible Seats of the Clouds, the distant Tracts of Land, unfrequented Paths of the Sea; lofty Tops of the Mountains, low Bottoms of the Valleys, and deep Gulphs of the Ocean: That in Heart we advance to the Saints themselves above, yea draw them to us, scale the etherial Towers, freely range through the celestial Fields, measure the Magnitudes, and determine the Interstices of the Stars, prescribe inviolable Laws to the Heavens themselves, and confine the wandering Circuits of the Stars within fixed Bounds: Lastly, that we comprehend the vast Fabrick of the Universe, admire and contemplate the wonderful Beauty of the Divine 249 Workmanship, and to learn the incredible Force and Sagacity of our own Minds, by certain Experiments, and to acknowledge the Blessings of Heaven with pious Affection.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 27-30

Life , God , War , Health

“The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time… As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion…. Harmony… can be considered a special kind of rhythm…. pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are… periodic or… repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion. Kepler… in the third book of Harmonice mundi… attempted to make other… related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Books , Music , Mathematics , Time

“Sangam had many firsts. The first technicolour film, the first film to have two intervals — in a way I was a part of history.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Why Vyjayanthimala has 'nothing to say' about today's heroines

Way , History , Parting

“The movement has indeed been slow, and not such as man would have expected; but it has been analogous to the great movements of God in His providence and in His works. So, if we may credit the geologists, has this earth reached its present state. So have moved on the great empires. So retribution follows crime. So rise the tides. So grows the tree with long intervals of repose and apparent death. So comes on the spring, with battling elements and frequent reverses, with snowbanks and violets, and, if we had no experience, we might be doubtful what the end would be. But we know that back of all this, beyond these fluctuations, away in the serene heavens, the sun is moving steadily on; that these very agitations of the elements and seeming reverses, are not only the sign, but the result of his approach, and that the full warmth and radiance of the summer noontide are sure to come. So, O Divine Redeemer, Sun of Righteousness, come Thou! So will He come. It may be through clouds and darkness and tempest; but the heaven where He is, is serene; He is "traveling in the greatness of His strength; "and as surely as the throne of God abides, we know He shall yet reach the height and splendor of the highest noon, and that the light of millennial glory shall yet flood the earth.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 418.

Death , God , Travel , Spring

“In 1763 a Croatian Jesuit named Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711 - 1787) identified the ultimate implication of this mechanical atomic theory. One of the crucial aspects of Isaac Newton's laws of motion is their predictive capability. If we know how an object is moving at any instant - how fast, and in which direction - and if, furthermore, we know the forces acting on it, we can calculate its future trajectory exactly. This predictability made it possible for astronomers to use Newton's laws of motion and gravity to calculate, for example, when future solar eclipses would happen.
Boscovich realized that if all the world is just atoms in motion and collision, then an all-seeing mind "could, from a continuous arc described in an interval of time, no matter how small, by all points of matter, derive the law [that is, a universal map] of forces itself … Now, if the law of forces were known, and the position, velocity and direction of all the points at any given instant, it would be possible for a mind of this type to foresee all the necessary subsequent motions and states, and to predict all the phenomena that necessarily followed from them."”

Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) Croat-Italian physicist

Philip Ball, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2006).

World , Law , Universe , Time

“When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great, the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefits.”

Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) English historian

Quoted in Propaganda (1928) by Edward Bernays

“1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions (1982), p. 21

Indecision

“The relation between an O. A. (Oblique Addict) and his R. C. (Recharge Connection) is so intense that they can only endure each other’s company for brief and infrequent intervals—I mean aside from recharge meets, when all personal contact is eclipsed by recharge process.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Habit Notes continued
Naked Lunch (1959)

Personality

“By August, 1913, all links in the chain of moving assembly lines were complete except the last and most spectacular one - the one we had first experimented with one Sunday morning just five years before. Again a towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan. Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line. Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line. This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production. Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed. Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun.”

Charles E. Sorensen (1881–1968) American businessman

Source: My Forty Years with Ford, 1956, p. 130-131 ; As cited in: EyeWitness to History (2005)

History , Time , Parting , Speed

“A finite interval of time generally contains an innumerable series of feelings; and when these become welded together in association the result is a general idea.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Feeling , Idea , Time

“The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world. These they taught were of two kinds-the Cataclysm, or destruction by deluge, which sweeps away the whole human race, and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of nature; and the Ekpyrosis, or conflagration, which dissolves the globe itself. From the Egyptians also they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of men, and a shock of the elements or a deluge overwhelmed them; after which calamity, Astrea again descended on the earth, to renew the golden age.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Men , God , Age , World

“The conclusion seems to be irresistible that such laws of nature as the principle of conservation of energy, the principle of conservation of momentum and the law of gravitation are necessary consequences of our modes of measurement. They are, in fact, elaborately disguised identities which could have been predicted a priori by a being of sufficiently powerful analytical insight who fully understood all that is implied in the way we measure space-time intervals.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

As quoted by Gerald James Whitrow, The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Law , Way , Nature , Time

“There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech to the National Press Club http://books.google.com/books?id=8gLmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA439 (20 March 1914)
1910s

Forgetting

“Oh! think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods,
Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time,
Filled up with horror all, and big with death!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act I, scene iii.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Death , Birth , Thinking , Time

“The two parties represent two opposite moods of the English mind, which may be trusted, unless past experience is wholly useless, to succeed each other from time to time. Neither of them, neither the love of organic changes nor the dislike of it, can be described as normal to a nation. In every nation, they have succeeded each other at varying intervals during the whole of the period which separates its birth from its decay. Each finds in the circumstances and constitution of individuals a regular support which never deserts it. Among men, the old, the phlegmatic, the sober-minded, among classes, those who have more to lose than to gain by change, furnish the natural Conservatives. The young, the envious, the restless, the dreaming, those whose condition cannot easily be made worse, will be rerum novarum cupidi.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

But the two camps together will not nearly include the nation: for the vast mass of every nation is unpolitical.
Quarterly Review, 133, 1872, pp. 583-584
1870s

Love , Men , Dreams , Birth

“Without the aid of these, then, it is not possible to deal accurately with the forms of being nor to discover the truth in things, knowledge of which is wisdom, and evidently not even to philosophize properly, for "just as painting contributes to the menial arts toward correctness of theory, so in truth lines, numbers, harmonic intervals, and the revolutions of circles bear aid to the learning of the doctrines of wisdom," says the Pythagorean Androcydes. Likewise Archytas of Tarentum, at the beginning of… On Harmony, says… in about these words: "It seems to me that they do well to study mathematics, and it is not at all strange that they have correct knowledge about each thing, what it is. For if they knew rightly the nature of the whole, they were also likely to see well what is the nature of the parts. About geometry, indeed, and arithmetic and astronomy, they have handed down to us a clear understanding, and not least also about music. For these seem to be sister sciences; for they deal with sister subjects, the first two forms of being."”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Wisdom , Truth , Art , Music

“The Wahabis, followers of a fanatical Moslem heresy, had imposed their strict rules on easy and civilized Kasim. In Kasim there was but little coffee-hospitality, much prayer and fasting, no tobacco, no artistic dalliance with women, no silk clothes, no gold and silver head-ropes or ornaments. Everything was forcibly pious or forcibly puritanical.
It was a natural phenomenon, this periodic rise at intervals of little more than a century, of ascetic creeds in Central Arabia. Always the votaries found their neighbours' beliefs cluttered with inessential things, which became impious in the hot imagination of their preachers. Again and again they had arisen, had taken possession, soul and body, of the tribes, and had dashed themselves to pieces on the urban Semites, merchants and concupiscent men of the world. About their comfortable possessions the new creeds ebbed and flowed like the tides or the changing seasons, each movement with the seeds of early death in its excess of Tightness. Doubtless they must recur so long as the causes — sun, moon, wind, acting in the emptiness of open spaces, weigh without check on the unhurried and uncumbered minds of the desert-dwellers.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 24

Death , Women , Men , World

“Since completing this memoir in 1995 I've returned to Palestine every year. In fact, apart from traveling abroad to lecture, Palestine is the only place I've been since I first journeyed there 15 years ago. I sometimes fantasize vacationing in Greece or Italy but never do. If I have time and cost isn't prohibitive, I always return to Palestine. I do so mostly from a sense of duty - do I have a right to be elsewhere? - relieved by the authentic affection I've developed for friends. I cannot say I enjoy going back. From the moment I arrive, even before arriving, I count the minutes left before I depart. The eminent Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Gaza as "the largest concentration camp ever to exist." The West Bank ranks only a mite less awful. Once the Israeli wall currently under construction is finished, the West Bank will replace Gaza with top honors. Bordered on both sides by four meter deep trenches, fortified with guard towers at regular intervals, and topped with barbed wire, this massive barricade will stretch across fully 347 kilometers - twice the size of the Berlin Wall.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

Postscript to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine
Other sourced statements

Travel , Sense , Universe , Time

“The difference between giving with freedom and dignity on the one side, with acknowledgment and gratitude on the other, and giving under compulsion—giving with disgrace, giving with resentment dogging you at every step of your path—this difference is, in our eyes, fundamental, and this is the main reason not only why we have acted, but why we have acted now. This, if I understand it, is one of the golden moments of our history—one of those opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely return, or, if they return, return at long intervals, and under circumstances which no man can forecast.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/07/second-reading-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (7 June 1886) introducing the Home Rule Bill
1880s

Dogs , History , Understanding , Freedom

“Tactility is the space of the interval; acoustic space is spherical and resonant.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988)

“The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”

Henry Gee (1962) British paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and editor

In Search of Deep Time—Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, by Henry Gee, 1999, p. 23.

Time

“There is no long interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid, and life-giving waters. No one ever desired the grace of God, really and truly desired it, but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it; just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 390.

Life , God , Sense , Water