Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| The Least Successful Collector Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the works of Shakespeare. One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The remaining three folios are now in the British Museum. The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
| There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
| Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. -- Samuel Johnson | |
| I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year. -- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new science of data processing), c. 1957 | |
| After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments. Harvey Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject with Millikan. Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in Physics Today, June 1982, page 43. In it, Fletcher claims that he was the first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil. According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan. -- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles" Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923. | |
