Mahlon Hoagland quotes

“As children we all possess a natural uninhabited curiosity, a hunger for explanations, which seems to die slowly as we age--suppressed, I suppose by the need not to appear ignorant.”
-- Mahlon Hoagland

#Children Quotes #Ignorant Quotes #Curiosity Quotes

“Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.”
-- Mahlon Hoagland

#Simplicity Quotes #Criteria Quotes

“The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer.”

“Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings All desired and timely things. All whom morning sends to roam, Hesper loves to lead them home. Home return who him behold, Child to mother, sheep to fold, Bird to nest from wandering wide: Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.”

“Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.”

“When we look at a child, we see that sense of fullness, of intrinsic aliveness, of joy in being, is not the result of something else. There is value in just being oneself, it is not because of something one does or doesn't do. It is there in the beginning, when we are children, but slowly it gets lost.”

“Elderly gentlemen, gentle in all respects, kind to animals, beloved by children, and fond of music, are found in lonely corners of the downs, hacking at sandpits or tussocks of grass, and muttering in a blind, ungovernable fury elaborate maledictions which could not be extracted from them by robbery or murder. Men who would face torture without a word become blasphemous at the short fourteenth. It is clear that the game of golf may well be included in that category of intolerable provocations which may legally excuse or mitigate behavior not otherwise excusable.”

“The position of modern science, as far as an ignorant man of letters can understand it, seems not a step in advance of that held by Huxley and Romanes in the last century.”

“Where I am ignorant, Lord, teach me. Where I am wrong, Lord, correct me. Where I am right, Lord, confirm me.”

“As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know anything of the origin of steamships and railways”

Source : Alfred Russel Wallace, Andrew Berry (2003). “Infinite Tropics: An Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology”, p.85, Verso

“Maybe if literature was prohibited the same way as cocaine, people out of pure curiosity would try to get a couple of lines”

“Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence.”