C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Science
Science is the topography of ignorance.
Science dissects death.
Human science is uncertain guess.
Toil of science swells the wealth of art.
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Steam, that great civilizer.
While bright-eyed Science watches round.
We hail science as man’s truest friend and noblest helper.
Science has but one fashion—to lose nothing once gained.
Who thinks all science, as all virtue, vain.
Science is the systematic classification of experience.
Science is the natural ally of religion.
Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.
Science sees signs: poetry, the thing signified.
For science is***like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.
Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end.
In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the latter poetry has become science.
Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago, but it is put to better use.
Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves.
The birth of science was the death of superstition.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Science seldom renders men amiable; women, never.
Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate.
How many wells of science there are in whose depths there is nothing but clear water!
The only hope of science is genuine induction.
Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
Science ever has been, and ever must be, the safeguard of religion.
Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.
Art and science have their meeting-point in method.
Science and art are the handmaids of religion.
Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology.
Science is teaching man to know and reverence truth, and to believe that only as far as he knows and loves it can he live worthily on earth, and vindicate the dignity of his spirit.
Science is simply common sense at its best—that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
There cannot be a body of rules without a rationale, and this rationale constitutes the science.
Through all God’s works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in His universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.
What are the sciences but maps of universal laws, and universal laws but the channels of universal power; and universal power but the outgoings of a universal mind?
Science is a good piece of furniture for a man to have in an upper chamber, provided he has common sense on the ground floor.
Science confounds everything; it gives to the flowers an animal appetite, and takes away from even the plants their chastity.
Science***necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses. Yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment. That was older, and awaited expectant these larger insights.
When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes besides that of Hercules.
The sciences are said, and they are truly said, to have a mutual connection, that any one of them may be the better understood, for an insight into the rest.
Science has penetrated the constitution of nature, and unrolled the mysterious pages of its history, and started again many, as yet, unanswered questions in respect to the mutual relations of matter and spirit, of nature and of God.
We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle’s theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.
Science—in other words, knowledge—is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance. But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity.
Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them.
Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear nations about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.
Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses.
But when science, passing beyond its own limits, assumes to take the place of theology, and sets up its own conception of the order of nature as a sufficient account of its cause, it is invading a province of thought to which it has no claim, and not unreasonably provokes the hostility of its best friends.
The sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other; nor is there any branch of learning but may be helped and improved by assistance drawn from other arts.
They may say what they like; everything is organized matter. The tree is the first link of the chain; man is the last. Men are young; the earth is old. Vegetable and animal chemistry are still in their infancy. Electricity, galvanism,—what discoveries in a few years!
To the natural philosopher, to whom the whole extent of nature belongs, all the individual branches of science constitute the links of an endless chain, from which not one can be detached without destroying the harmony of the whole.
Our abiding belief is that just as the workmen in the tunnel of St. Gothard, working from either end, met at last to shake hands in the very central root of the mountain, so students of nature and students of Christianity will yet join hands in the unity of reason and faith, in the heart of their deepest mysteries.
Science is knowledge certain and evident in itself, or by the principles from which it is deducted, or with which it is certainly connected. It is subjective, as existing in the mind; objective, as embodied in truths; speculative, as leading to do something, as in practical science.
It is certain that a serious attention to the sciences and liberal arts softens and humanizes the temper, and cherishes those fine emotions in which true virtue and honor consist. It rarely, very rarely happens that a man of taste and learning is not, at least, an honest man, whatever frailties may attend him.
The strength of all sciences, which consisteth in their harmony, each supporting the other, is as the strength of the old man’s fagot in the band; for were it not better for a man in a fair room to set up one great light, or branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small watch-candle into every corner?
Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common-sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of common-sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
To me there never has been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction, than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world; and I certainly never endeavored to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile, who, in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest.
I have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences; but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects disgusted me with them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to him, and that in diving into them, I wandered farther from my real object than those who knew them not, and I forgave them for not having attended to these things. I expected then, however, that I should find some companions in the study of man, since it was so specifically a duty. I was in error. There are fewer students of man than of geometry.
Holding then to science with one hand—the left hand—we give the right hand to religion, and cry; “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things, more wondrous than the shining worlds can tell.” Obedient to the promise, religion does awaken faculties within us, does teach our eyes to the beholding of more wonderful things. Those great worlds blazing like suns die like feeble stars in the glory of the morning, in the presence of this new light. The soul knows that an infinite sea of love is all about it, throbbing through it, everlasting arms of affection lift it, and it bathes itself in the clear consciousness of a Father’s love.