Burns

Famous quotes containing the word burns:

    Argument is conclusive ... but ... it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.... For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns ... his hearer’s mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it ... that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.
    Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294)

    But pleasures are like poppies spread,
    You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
    Or like the snow falls in the river,
    A moment white—then melts for ever;
    —Robert Burns (1759–1796)

    It is because everything is relative
    That we shall never see in that sphere of pure wisdom and
    Entertainment much more than groping shadows of an incomplete
    Former existence so close it burns like the mouth that
    Closes down over all your effort like the moment
    Of death
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)