Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle #1)

by Neal Stephenson

Natural philosophy, like war and romance, is best done by young men.

Return to the core, look at first causes, heal the central wound.

Bewilderment, in its ancient and literal sense of being cast away in a trackless wild, was the lot of the explorer,

(for Drake held it as a religious conviction that the State had no business imposing on him with taxes and tariffs, and considered smuggling not just a good idea but a sacred observance),

Rather, it’s as if I’ve got an Amsterdam inside of my head.”

Babel of religious disputation that never dies down. I have got used to it.”

I think that you have withdrawn into a sort of Massachusetts of the mind!

for the salvation of his immortal soul. Daniel could not but sympathize, though he knew too little of sin and too little of Isaac to guess what his friend might be repenting for.

But its converse was that when you were treating with a man like Isaac Newton, the rashest and cruelest judge who ever lived, you must be sure and swift in your own judgments.

This soul, this extra thing added to the brain, reminds me of the Quintessence that the Alchemists are forever seeking: a mysterious supernatural presence that is supposed to suffuse the world.

“It all comes from first principles. Everything can be measured. Everything acts according to physical laws. Our minds included. My mind, that’s doing the deciding, is already set in its course, like a ball rolling down a trough.”

on the theory that as the sun rises on the eastern fringe of America, small things cast long shadows westwards.

I can go away and imagine generations of Waterhouses yet unborn, and Godfrey can imagine a hero-father better than I can really be.”

his mind was a homunculus squatting in the middle of his skull, peering out through good but imperfect telescopes and listening horns, gathering observations that had been distorted along the way, as a lens put chromatic aberrations into all the light that passed through it.

Daniel experienced a faint echo of what it must be like, all the time, to be Isaac Newton: a permanent ongoing epiphany, an endless immersion in lurid radiance, a drowning in light, a ringing of cosmic harmonies in the ears.

That one man sickens and dies, while another flourishes, are characters in the cryptic message that philosophers seek to decode.”

The old gaffers back here don’t necessarily think he’s any less crazy but they don’t think less of him for it.

Bad money drives out good”)

True beauty is to be found in natural forms. The more we magnify, and the closer we examine, the works of Artifice, the grosser and stupider they seem. But if we magnify the natural world it only becomes more intricate and excellent.”

Daniel really knew of no way to regulate his actions other than to be rational.

He discovereth the depe & secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkenes, and the light dwelleth with him. —DANIEL 2:22

the Sun is not a point source of light.

“Just so—if only we could jump fast enough, or had a strong enough wind at our backs, we could all be planets.”

They shielded his burnt eyes from the light, yes. But as well, might they hide his burnt heart from the sight of Daniel?

Crying loudly is childish, in that it reflects a belief, on the cryer’s part, that someone is around to hear the noise, and come a-running to make it all better. Crying in absolute silence, as Daniel does this morning, is the mark of the mature sufferer who no longer nurses, nor is nursed by, any such comfortable delusions.

‘You will please to remember that we have taken to task the whole Universe, and that we were obliged to do so by the nature of our Design!’

“Those who are responsible for draining the Navy’s coffers, must answer to those who are responsible for filling them,”

The real answer was known only to John Wilkins, Lord Bishop of Chester, Author of both the Cryptonomicon and the Philosophical Language, who encrypted with his left hand and made things known to all possible worlds with his right.

Hoops of gold are stronger than bands of steel.”

Menopause had finally terminated her fantastically involved and complex relationship with her womb:

Mayflower had (fortunately for her!) been born with that ability, peculiar to certain women, of being able to talk about her womb in any company without it seeming inappropriate, and not only that but you never knew where in a conversation, or a letter, she would launch into it, plunging everyone into a clammy sweat as her descriptions and revelations forced them to consider topics so primal that they were beyond eschatology—even Drake had had to shut up about the Apocalypse when Mayflower had gotten rolling.

The condition of Mayflower’s womb affected the moods of England as the Moon ruled the tides.

“Quicksilver is the elementary form of all things fusible; for all things fusible, when melted, are changed into it, and it mingles with them because it is of the same substance with them…”

“It follows simple rules—it obeys logic—and so Natural Philosophy should understand it, encompass it—and I, who know and understand more than almost anyone in the Royal Society, should comprehend it. But I don’t. I never will…if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than Alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules…”

The joke being that London and Bedlam seemed to have exchanged places: for Bedlam had been emptied out and torn down in preparation for its reconstruction, and was a serene rock-garden now, whereas all of London (save a few special plots such as the Monument site and St. Paul’s) was in the throes of building—stones and bricks and timbers moving through the city on streets so congested that watching them fill up in the morning was like watching sausage casings being stuffed with meat.

oxen—hernias with legs.

Jack had been presented with the opportunity to be stupid in some way that was much more interesting than being shrewd would’ve been. These moments seemed to come to Jack every few days.

Jack was almost invariably possessed by something that Bob had heard about in Church called the Imp of the Perverse.

For days, after the Puritans had been chased away, any Vagabond boy who farted would claim that the event had been foreordained by the Almighty, and enrolled in a cœlestial Book, at the dawn of time.

“You look very young,” he said, “and you talk like a girl who is in need of a spanking.” “Books of India,” she said coolly, “have entire chapters about that.”

“For a man, talking to a woman is never precisely safe.

What place do you come from, where people actually care about how everyone feels about things? What possible bearing could anyone’s feelings have on anything that makes a bloody difference?”

“The world smells bad, lass. Best to hold your nose and get on with it.”

There are two kinds of poor—God’s and the Devil’s. God’s poor, such as widows, orphans, and recently escaped white slave-girls with pert arses, can and should be helped. Devil’s poor are beyond help—charity’s wasted on ’em. The distinction ’tween the two categories is recognized in all civilized countries.”

No man was more comprehensively doomed than him whose chief source of gratification was making favorable impressions on some particular woman.

It may seem hard for you to believe, but mark my word—whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.”

“Remember, Jack: whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.”

It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink, and have a sense of humour.

“What is ‘real’ money, Jack? Answer me that.”

wars were mere diversions for bored princes, but trade fairs were serious.