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Then I nipped up to Oxford, meaning only to pay a call on John Wilkins and pick up some copies of Cryptonomicon.” “What is that?” Ben wants to know. “A very queer old book, dreadfully thick, and full of nonsense,” says Godfrey. “Papa uses it to keep the door from blowing shut.”
Isaac Newton had stopped believing himself capable of sin.
“It is not skepticism for its own sake, Father. Simply an awareness that we are prone to error, and that it is difficult to view anything impartially.”
Faint ticks, by the thousands, merged into a sound like wind-driven sleet against a windowpane. Daniel looked down to see it was just hordes of fleas who had abandoned the rat corpses and converged on him from all across the cellar, and were now ricocheting off his leather boots.
“Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you.”
“In company such as this we must all elevate one another, for I carry no advantage on these men,” Huygens said. This triggered a long tedious volley of self-deprecations from Fatio and Waterhouse.
it is a symptom of the excessively rapid pace of change in the modern world, and they make an analogy to poisoning by quicksilver, which has turned so many alchemists into shaky, irritable lunatics.
the true benefit of religion is not to make people virtuous, which is impossible, but to put a sort of bridle on the worst excesses of their viciousness.
