The biologist can push it back to the original protist, and the chemist can push it back to the crystal, but none of them touch the real question of why or how the thing began at all. The astronomer goes back untold million of years and ends in gas and emptiness, and then the mathematician sweeps the whole cosmos into unreality and leaves one with mind as the only thing of which we have any immediate apprehension. Cogito ergo sum, ergo omnia esse videntur. All this bother, and we are no further than Descartes. Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.
More Quotes from Dorothy L. Sayers:
Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.Dorothy L. Sayers
Trouble shared is trouble halved.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Astronomy & Cosmology Quotes, Sense & Perception QuotesBased on Keywords: biologist, chemist, cogito, cosmos, descartes, ergo, esse, hoot, omnia, sweeps, unreality, videntur
His foe was folly and his weapon wit.
Anthony Hope
Falling down became second nature and it really didn't bother me.
Nancy Kerrigan
Money has no moral opinions.
Abraham Polonsky