72 quotes
Liquuefaction of bodies, solidification of liquids, crystallization—are they not forms of combinations of integrant molecules?
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
If God is absolutely good, why should He punish the sinner for all eternity, since He does not lead him to good, or give him an example?
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Form resolutions in advance in order not to reflect during action. Then obey thyself blindly.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Why try to be witty? I would rather be thought stupid and modest than witty and pretentious.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Egotism is the most common and most hated of all vices. Properly speaking, it is the only one which should be hated.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
The laws of war, do they say? As if war were not the destruction of all laws.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Self-possession without self-sufficiency. Courage without effrontery.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
If Christianity were pruned of all which is not Christ, this religion would be the simplest in the world.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Make intimate acquaintances only with much circumspection; perfect confidence in those who have been thoroughly tested. Nothing to do with others.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Carry when walking a book, and a note-book to preserve the ideas, and a piece of bread in order to prolong the walk if need be.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Listen attentively to your interlocutor, and so prepare him to listen in the same way to your reply, and predispose him in favor of your arguments.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
To each conqueror can be said, when he has ceased tormenting our poor globe, "Would you not have been able to tilt equally well against a little globe of pasteboard?"
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
The Collision of Bodies. ...[I]n the collision of bodies there is always expenditure of motive power. Perfectly elastic bodies only form an exception, and none such are found in nature.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Life is a short enough passage. I am half the journey. I will complete the remainder as I can.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Savery, Newcomen, Smeaton, the famous Watt, Woolf, Trevithick, and some other English engineers, are the veritable creators of the steam-engine.
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)
The decadence of the Greeks and Romans... proves the influence of institutions upon customs.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Iron and heat are... the supporters, the bases, of the mechanic arts.
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)
The maximum of motive power resulting from the employment of steam is also the maximum of motive power realizable by any means whatever.1878
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)
When a hypothesis no longer suffices to explain phenomena, it should be abandoned. This is the case with... caloric as matter, as a subtile fluid.
Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)
Notwithstanding the work of all kinds done by steam-engines... their theory is very little understood, and the attempts to improve them are still directed almost by chance.
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)