Dictionary De - En
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De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science. VIII. Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify. IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead. X. Everything falls faster than an anvil. Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner cartoons. -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980 | |
| In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel. -- Mark Twain | |
| History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another... Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained. - Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species" | |
| History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another... Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained. -- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species" | |
| brain-damaged, generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Multics, adj: Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he/she should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is bad; it also implies it is unusable. | |
| It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill, or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing. It dehumanizes those who achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy notions. This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from folklore to Article of Belief. It enhances their self-esteem and lightens their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge, and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum competence will be quite enough. -- The Underground Grammarian | |
| All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it. -- Richard P. Feynman | |
| Psychologists think they're experimental psychologists. Experimental psychologists think they're biologists. Biologists think they're biochemists. Biochemists think they're chemists. Chemists think they're physical chemists. Physical chemists think they're physicists. Physicists think they're theoretical physicists. Theoretical physicists think they're mathematicians. Mathematicians think they're metamathematicians. Metamathematicians think they're philosophers. Philosophers think they're gods. | |
| I was trying not to mention backtracking. Which, of course, means that yours is "righter" than mine, in a theoretical sense. -- Larry Wall in <199710211624.JAA17833@wall.org> | |
