Abstract

Famous quotes containing the word abstract:

    Alice grown lazy, mammoth but not fat,
    Declines upon her lost and twilight age;
    Above in the dozing leaves the grinning cat
    Quivers forever with his abstract rage....
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.
    John Berger (b. 1926)