Quicksilver Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Book: Quicksilver
Quotes of Book: Quicksilver

Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
if Newton is the finger, Leibniz is the stone, and they press against each other with equal and opposite force, a little bit harder every day. RAVENSCAR:
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
He's rich," Jack muttered to Eliza, "or connected with rich persons.""Yes-the clothes, the coins ...""All fakeable.""How do you know him to be rich, then?""In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games." {Jack Shaftoe and Eliza}
book-quote seventeenth-century wealthy-men
Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you." Eliza could not help laughing.
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
Shall we then say, like Newton, that all such truths are made arbitrarily by God? Shall we seek such truths in the occult? For if God has laid these rules down arbitrarily, then they are occult by nature. To me this notion is offensive; it seems to cast God in the rôle of a capricious despot who desires to hide the truth from us.
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
The old stars-and-moons act was a good way to farm the unduly trusting. But the need to raise money in the first place seemed to call into question one's own ability to turn lead into gold. {"Enoch in Boston, 1713"}
book-quote wizards alchemy charlatans
Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
The mysterious Enoch Root meets 8-year-old Benjamin Franklin, Boston, 1713: "Do I look like a schoolmaster to you?" "No, but you talk like one." "You know something of schoolmasters, do you?""Yes, sir," the boy says, faltering a bit as he sees the jaws of the trap swinging toward his leg. "Yet here it is the middle of Monday-" "The place was empty 'cause of the Hanging. I didn't want to stay and-" "And what?" "Get more ahead of the others than I was already." "If you are ahead, the correct thing is to get used to it-not to make yourself into an imbecile. Come, you belong in school.
book-quote school intelligence colonial-america
Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
This may not however elevate your stature during the years you have remaining; for fame's a weed, but repute is a slow-growing oak, and all we can do during our lifetimes is hop around like squirrels and plant acorns.
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
Leibniz is proposing a strange inversion of what we normally mean when we describe a man as distinguished, or unique. Normally when we say these things, we mean that the man himself stands out from a crowd in some way. But Leibniz is saying that such a man's uniqueness is rooted in his ability to perceive the rest of the universe with unusual clarity-to distinguish one thing from another more effectively than ordinary souls." Roger
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
If you posture defiantly, it tells me that you have not learned the skill of recognizing when you are running awry, and correcting yourself. And you must leave my house in that case, for such people only go further and further astray until they find destruction. But if you take this opportunity to consider where you have gone wrong, and to adjust your course, it tells me that you shall do well enough in the end.
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
Like two arms of a snowflake, Mind and Matter grew out of a common center-and even though they grew independently and without communicating-each developing according to its own internal rules-nevertheless they grew in perfect harmony, and share the same shape and structure.
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
But thoughts of this sort were chased away by others. One of those moments had arrived: Jack had been presented with the opportunity to be stupid in some way that was much more interesting than being shrewd would've been. These moments seemed to come to Jack every few days.
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Neal Stephenson _ Quicksilver
Paris to Jack and most others, then, was a network of deep trenches with vertical walls, and a few drafty battlements atop those walls-otherwise, the world's largest collection of closed and locked doors.
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