True Specific Gravity

Famous quotes containing the words specific gravity, true, specific and/or gravity:

    The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life’s true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)

    I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
    Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
    Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
    musical, self-sufficient,
    I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
    Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
    Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
    island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    Here I sit down to form characters. One I intend to be all goodness; All goodness he is. Another I intend to be all gravity; All gravity he is. Another Lady Gish; All Lady Gish she is. I am all the while absorbed in the character. It is not fair to say—I, identically I, am anywhere, while I keep within the character.
    Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)