To take another simile [that the brain is like a machine], if we imagine a great library containing books which have a vast number of cross references one to another, then should one whole shelf be burned, it might be possible to reconstruct the lost books -- but somewhat less perfectly than at first.
Colin CherryRelated topics
brain containing cross great less lost might number possible should simile somewhat take vastRelated quotes
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson
I do not see in what way the face of a man should be a less interesting landscape than any other. A man, the physical person of a man, is a little world, like any other a country, with its towns, and suburbs... As a rule what is needed in a portrait is a great deal of the general, and very little of the particular.
Jean Dubuffet
To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
William Cobbett