A Quote by Edward E. Barnard

It is well to fetter the wings of our fancy and restrain its flights.

Edward E. Barnard

Quote Topics

Fancy Flights Our Restrain Well Wings

Quote Author

Edward E. Barnard
American - Astronomer
December 16, 1857 - February 6, 1923

It is well to fetter the wings of our fancy and restrain its flights. It is quite possible we may have formed entirely erroneous ideas of what we actually see. The greenish gray patches may not be seas at all, nor the ruddy continents, solid land. Neither may the obscuring patches be clouds of vapor. Man is too quick at forming conclusions. Let him but indistinctly see a thing, or even be undecided as to whether he does actually see it and he will then and there set himself to theorizing, and build immense castles of conjecture on a foundation, of whose existence he is by no means certain.

Edward E. Barnard

The wise say that it is not an iron, wooden or fiber fetter which is a strong one, but the besotted hankering after trinkets, children and wives, that, say the wise, is the strong fetter. It drags one down, and loose as it feels, it is hard to break. Breaking this fetter, people renounce the world, free from longing and abandoning sensuality.

Gautama Buddha

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again. Well, they've not idea what money's for- Ten to one they'll start another war. I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'! Fancy giving money to the Government!

A. P. Herbert

Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.

Vladimir Nabokov

If I'm crisp and economical in my delivery, have smooth transitions, movement and animation, and flights of fancy, that would get me an A.

Franklyn Ajaye

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

Ned Vizzini

We fear not God because of any compulsion; our faith is no fetter, our profession is no bondage, we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, our piety is our pleasure, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight.

Charles Spurgeon

Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.

William James

I have no fancy living at all. Well, I have a house in Sun Valley. Five acres in the woods. I guess that's fancy.

B. Wayne Hughes

Cutting up fowl to predict the future is, if done honestly and with as little interpretation as possible, a kind of randomization. But chicken guts are hard to read and invite flights of fancy or corruption.

Ian Hacking

Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.

Honore de Balzac

The spectacle [of American politics] resembles that of swarms of insects changing from worms to wings. They must get the wings ordie. For our salvation, Mr. Wilbur Wright is providing wings. He will also have to provide a new insect to use them.

Henry Adams

It is true that writers often owe their most inspired thoughts, their most extraordinary phrases, to their generous typesetters, who assist their flights of fancy with so-called typographical errors.