Famous quotes containing the words formula, drift and/or asia:
“Ideals possess the strange quality that if they were completely realized they would turn into nonsense. One could easily follow a commandment such as Thou shalt not kill to the point of dying of starvation; and I might establish the formula that for the proper functioning of the mesh of our ideals, as in the case of a strainer, the holes are just as important as the mesh.”
—Robert Musil (18801942)
“But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the hot bread and sweet cakes; and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)