Fluid Quotes - page 6
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
Herman Melville
In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.
Oswald Spengler
Even well-known words were often pronounced differently and could have unfamiliar meanings; connotations were not fixed, but fluid. Definitions drifted. He was constantly brought up short by the sudden realization that what he thought he had said was not at all what he meant-at least as it had been understood by his hearers. Still, he was coming to grips with the slippery speech, and his confidence was growing.
Stephen R. Lawhead
Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual structures - consciously or unconsciously.
Niels Bohr
Do you think that you can clear your mind by sitting constantly in silent meditation This makes your mind narrow, not clear. Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places and at all times. That is true meditation.... The Tao is clear and simple, and it doesn't avoid the world.
Laozi
I perceived that, in order to make the best use of steam, it was necessary-first, that the cylinder should be maintained always as hot as the steam which entered it; and, secondly, that when the steam was condensed, the water of which it was composed, and the injection itself, should be cooled down to 100°, or lower, where that was possible. The means of accomplishing these points did not immediately present themselves; but early in 1765 it occurred to me, that if a communication were opened between a cylinder containing steam, and another vessel which was exhausted of air and other fluids, the steam, as an elastic fluid, would immediately rush into the empty vessel, and continue so to do until it had established an equilibrium; and if that vessel were kept very cool by an injection, or otherwise, more steam would continue to enter until the whole was condensed.
James Watt
Be fluid, at ease in whatever situation you find yourself. Your challenge is to deal with people with ease regardless of what they do to you. Remember what I have said, that it is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
Carlos Castaneda
I don't know quite what I mean by my own metaphor, but I have feeling, it may bring in an even greater, faster space of fluid transmission, where no structures, as we used to understand structure, will sustain itself – we will have to come up with new notions of structure where things can change by the moment. I'm talking about physical structures, political structures, I can't see coherent political structures in the traditional sense lasting beyond the next twenty years, I don't think that would be possible.
Alan Moore
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion.
Denis Diderot
Korean schoolchildren in North and South learn that Japan invaded their fiercely patriotic country in 1905, spent forty years trying to destroy its language and culture, and withdrew without having made any significant headway. This version of history is just as uncritically accepted by most foreigners who write about Korea. Yet the truth is more complex. For much of the country's long history its northern border was fluid and the national identities of literate Koreans and Chinese mutually indistinguishable. Believing their civilization to have been founded by a Chinese sage in China's image, educated Koreans subscribed to a Confucian worldview that posited their country in a position of permanent subservience to the Middle Kingdom. Even when Korea isolated itself from the mainland in the seventeenth century, it did so in the conviction that it was guarding Chinese tradition better than the Chinese themselves. For all their xenophobia, the Koreans were no nationalists.
Brian Reynolds Myers
I used to have boundaries up all the time, which is limiting. I never want to feel limited. If anything is life changing, being the descendant of a slave is. I went into therapy 10 years ago because I needed to work that out. I've gotten better. Everything about me is more fluid, much less rigid. I'm gonna do everything I can, feel everything I can, until it hurts. Then I'll stop. All they did was buy us–it's not an honor, it's just something that happened. Our gifts belong to us.
Ntozake Shange
McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today-the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs.
John McGraw
