Favorite Quotes

“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?” “But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan. “Are -are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund. “I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

― C.S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”

― C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.”

― C.S. Lewis

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

– C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed him.”

― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

“Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.”

― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

“The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths–but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.”

― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

“Be thou glad sleeper and thy sorrow offcast. I am the gate to all good adventure.”

― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

“They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”

― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three)

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

– Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. “

– Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

– Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

– Mark Twain

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

– Winston Churchill

“It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.”

– Galileo Galilei

“Artiformologicalintactitudinarianisminist”

– one who studies 4-5 letter latin prefixes and suffixes

“A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.”

– John Ciardi

“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”

– Anatole France

“Try not to have a good time…this is supposed to be educational.”

– Charles Schulz

“I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun – not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

– C.S. Lewis

“Two roads diverged in wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

– Galileo Galilei

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

– Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

– Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

– Chinese Proverb

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”

– Frank Herbert, Dune

“It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.”

– Mark Twain

“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrity. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”

– Albert Einstein

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

– Abraham Maslow

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”

– Plutarch

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”

– Chinese proverb

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

– Charles Mingus

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”

– Plato (429-347 BC)

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

– H. Jackson Brown

“Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.”

– Mike Adams

“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he’ll be a mile away–and barefoot.”

– Sarah Jackson

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.”

-Marston Bates

“It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you are not.”

-Denis Waitly

“The earth has music for those who listen.”

-William Shakespeare

“He who walks in another’s tracks leaves no footprints.”

-Joan Brannon

“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.”

-Doug Larson

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

– Albert Einstein

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

– Albert Einstein

“I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.”

-Albert Einstein

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

-Albert Einstein

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty .”

-Albert Einstein

“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.”

-Albert Einstein

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

-Albert Einstein

And all shall be well

And all manner of things shall be well.

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire,

And the fire and the rose are one.

– T. S. Eliot “Four Quartets”

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends –

it gives a lovely light.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay “First Fig”

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.

Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

– Ralph Vaull Starr

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

– Arthur O’Shaughnessy

“Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth”

Sherlock Holmes – The Sign of (the) Four

“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles”

Sherlock Holmes – The Boscombe Valley Mystery

“One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.”

Sherlock Holmes – A Study in Scarlet

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

– E. M. Forster –

“He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes, but he who never asks a question remains a fool forever.”

– Tom J. Connelly –

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”

– Bertrand Russell

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather just different kinds of good weather.”

– Don Herold

“There’s a South Pole,” said Christoper Robin, and I expect there’s an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don’t like talking about them.”

– Winnie-The-Pooh

“It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I just beat people up.”

– Muhammed Ali

“Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.”

– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180) Roman Emperor

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

– William Blake (1757-1827) British poet, artist, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“You can never step into the same river; for new waters are always flowing on to you.”

– Heraclitus (fl. 500 BC)

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”

– Wayne Gretzky

“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.”

– Wernher Von Braun

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”

– Isaac Newton

“Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?”

– Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

– Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

“The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

-Thomas Huxley

“Wonder, rather than doubt, is the root of knowledge.”

-Abraham Heschel

“Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.”

Kelvin Throop III

“Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgi

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

– Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”

– Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“We cannot do great things – only small things with great love.”

– Mother Teresa

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

– Mother Theresa

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

– John Muir from My First Summer in the Sierra

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”

– John Muir from The Yosemite (1912), page 256.

“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening – still all is Beauty!”

– John Muir

“Surely all God’s people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes – all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.”

– John Muir in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, (1913), pages 186-187

“Everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so- called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks… While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood…in Nature’s warm heart. Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”

– John Muir in Letter to wife Louie, July 1888, Life and Letters of John Muir 1924.

“Nature is at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion,chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another”

– John Muir August 1899

“The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds, and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears.”

– John Muir in A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, 1916

“….and you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

– C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity.

“I did not mean to climb it, but got excited and soon was on top.”

– John Muir (from a letter to his wife explaining why he climbed Mount Rainier.)

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“I can take my telescope and look millions of miles into space, but I can lay it aside..go into my room, shut the door, get down on my knees in earnest prayer, and see more of heaven, and get closer to God than I can assisted by all the telescopes.”

– Sir Isaac Newton

“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

– Sir Isaac Newton

“I like nonsense. . . it wakes up the brain cells.”

– Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss.)

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

– John Muir

“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt—it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.”

– Hal Boyle

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush aflame with God.

But only those who see take off their shoes.

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

– Elizabeth Browning

“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.”

– Silicon Valley technology forecaster Paul Saffo

“will you promise not to do anything to me if I do come?” “I make no promise”

– Polly talking with Aslan from the Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

“There is no use trying, said Alice; one can’t believe impossible things. I dare say you haven’t had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

– Lewis Carroll

“Sometimes our eyes can glimpse connections that our brains don’t understand”

– George Johnson in The Cancer Chronicles

“Classifying rivers is a bit like classifying people – at some point you must examine the individual”

– Peter Wampler, 1-13-01.

“Rivers behave much like an organism with many interrelated systems, hydraulic, biologic, physical. If we are to understand the interactions of these systems, perhaps we are better off looking to physiology rather than physics for our guide.”

Peter Wampler, 1-13-01

“Have you considered Jesus, or are you just taking someone else’s word for it?”

– Peter Wampler , 1998

“The only thing that changes about God is his relationship with you”

-Peter Wampler 2-26-2003

“Who or what is the pruner for the “tree of life”? Is it an impersonal force called natural selection or is it an intelligent force called God?”

– Peter Wampler 2/28/08

“Is all of nature a wild bramble growing where it will or is it a well manicured garden created for a purpose?”

– Peter Wampler 2/28/08

“Having babies is women’s work, everything else is negotiable.”

– Peter Wampler 2/28/08

“We all have our own voice with which to share the gospel. Out there in the world there are people that may only be able to hear our voice.”

– Peter Wampler 4/16/08

“Never try to share the love of God in Jesus name unless you know the name of the person with whom you are sharing God’s love.”

Peter Wampler – 7-28-14

“Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home”. – C.S Lewis in The Problem of Pain

“There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the Lamb; but as he spoke, his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane. “Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?” “I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. – C.S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader

If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding a place in him. C.S. Lewis Screwtape Letters

“The most certain sciences are like things lit up by the sun so that they may be seen. But it is God who gives the light. Reason is in our minds as sight is in our eyes, and the eyes of the mind are the senses of the soul.” – Saint Augustine (I Soliloq. 6)

Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” “No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. – C.S. Lewis from the Last Battle

“I would rather be a human becoming than a human being or a human doing”

– Peter Wampler 9-10-16

“I suppose that’s how it looks in prose. But it’s very different if you look at it through poetry … and I think it’s nicer … ”

Lucy Maud Montgomery – Anne of Avonlea

“What is an imagination for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people’s eyes”

Lucy Maud Montgomery – Anne of Avonlea

“one of the challenges of scientific inquiry is knowing when to step back – and how far back to step – and when to move in close”

Death by Black Hole – Neil DeGrass Tyson

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science”

The Nature of Science – Edwin Hubble

“The discourse of science is a conversation not a lecture”

Peter Wampler 7-29-17

“All those who wander are not lost” – J.R.R. Tolkien

You don’t grow old. You get old by not growing. – E. Stanley Jones

Science is a journey to take you someplace you have not been before – David D’Angelo

“Once you have had a chance to change things, to have a real-world impact, you never forget it” – Mona Hanna Attisha

“The eyes don’t see what the mind doesn’t know” – D.H. Lawrence (paraphrase)

“And here, too, one learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation…” – John Muir

“But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir

“If science isn’t fun you are doing it wrong” – Peter Wampler 2019

“Science is a wise friend to be consulted not a weapon to be wielded.” – Peter Wampler 2020

“Adventures can and typically do begin in unlikely places” – Devin Brown

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” – C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

“There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no center because it is all center” C.S. Lewis Perelandria

Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before. – John Muir Travels in Alaska

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” – Henry Thoreau