Functions

Famous quotes containing the word functions:

    The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Mark the babe
    Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
    One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
    Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
    With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
    And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
    To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
    The outward functions of intelligent man.
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)