Infinite Descending Chains

Famous quotes containing the words infinite, descending and/or chains:

    “Nothing has shown more fully the prodigious ignorance of human ideas and their littleness, than the discovery of [Sir William] Herschell, that what used to be called the Milky Way is a portion of perhaps an infinite multitude of worlds!”
    —Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    “Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Habit is the ballast that chains a dog to his vomit.”
    —Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)