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... an undercurrent of thought was going on in my mind which gave at last a result, whereof it is not too much to say that I felt at once the importance. An electric circuit seemed to close; and a spark flashed forth the herald (as I foresaw immediately) of many long years to come of definitely directed thought and work by myself, if spared, and, at all events, on the part of others if I should even be allowed to live long enough distinctly to communicate the discovery. Nor could I resist the impulse - unphilosophical as it may have been - to cut with a knife on a stone of Brougham Bridge, as we passed it, the fundamental formula which contains the Solution of the Problem, but, of course, the inscription has long since mouldered away.
--
in a letter to his son (dated August 5, 1865), describing his discovery of quaternions on October 16, 1843.

 

William Rowan Hamilton

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The Palestinian National Charter will live on as long as there is a knife in a Palestinian woman's hand with which she stabs an Israeli soldier or settler ... as long as there are suicide bombers in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv ... and as long as there is a child who throws a stone in the face of an Israeli soldier.

 

Hassan Nasrallah

 

Haven't I? -- he thought. Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else for two years?... He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he never allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be within his own mind, Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying it to her…Since the first time I saw you.... Nothing but your body, that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me, if... Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every conference you thought were so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed... You trusted me, didn't you? To recognize greatness? To think of you as you deserved -- as if you were a man?

 

Ayn Rand

 

Her washing ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And passed the long, long night away
In darning ragged hose.

But when the sun in all its state
Illumed the Eastern skies,
She passed about the kitchen grate
And went to making pies.

 

Phoebe Cary

 

In fact, Mr. Watson, it's a queer world, and the longer I live in it the queerer I find it. Once I thought it would be a good idea to regulate things myself and run the world as it ought to be run; but I gave it up long ago. The world's a stage, they say; but the show ain't always amusing, by a long chalk, and sometimes I wish I didn't have a reserved seat.

 

L. Frank Baum

 

If a baby really has no awareness of himself and is totally thing-directed and at the same time all his states of mind are projected onto things, our second paradox makes sense: on the one hand, thought in babies can be viewed as pure accommodation or exploratory movements, but on the other this very same thought is only one, long, completely autistic waking dream.

 

Jean Piaget