Physical Analogy Quotes

When your eyes are functioning well you don't see your eyes. If your eyes are imperfect you see spots in front of them. That means there are some lesions in the retina or wherever, and because your eyes aren't working properly, you feel them. In the same way, you don't hear your ears. If you have a ringing in your ears it means there's something wrong with your ears. Therefore, if you do feel yourself, there must be something wrong with you. Whatever you have, the sensation of I is like spots in front of your eyes - it means something's wrong with your functioning.

It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word.

The mind, too, has its regimen. It needs gymnastics, just like the body does.

I'm always busy. You know, the more I do, the more ideas I have—that's the funny thing. The brain is a muscle, and I'm a kind of body builder.

Being brokenhearted is like having broken ribs. On the outside it looks like nothing's wrong, but every breath hurts.

You get burned out very quickly. You can sprint 100 yards, but you cant sprint a mile, and these jobs are all sprints.

A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using and tiring it, just in the same way he can wear out the elbows of his coat.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

Depression isn't about, 'Woe is me, my life is this, that and the other', it's like having the worst flu all day that you just can't kick.

Writing is manual labor of the mind - like laying pipe.

In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!