A Quote by Frank Kermode

I noticed affixed to a laboratory door the following words: "Les théories passent. Le Grenouille reste. [The theories pass. The frog remains.] &mdashJean Rostand, Carnets d'un biologiste." There is a risk that in the less severe discipline of criticism the result may turn out to be different; the theories will remain but the frog may disappear.
Le biologiste passe, la grenouille reste. The biologist passes, the frog remains.
Theories pass. The frog remains.
Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.
If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out. But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn't figure out what going on until it's too late. Boiled frog. It's just a metter of working by slow degrees.
In restaurants where they serve frog's legs, what do they do with the rest of the frog? Do they just throw it away? You never see "frog torsos" on the menu. Is there actually a garbage can full of frog bodies in the alley? I wouldn't want to be a homeless guy looking for an unfinished cheeseburger and open the lid on that
There will be well-testable theories, hardly testable theories, and non-testable theories. Those which are non-testable are of no interest to empirical scientists. They may be described as metaphysical.
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really enjoys it, and the frog generally dies as a result.
The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.
You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.
Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.
Our minds are specifically adapted to developing certain theories, and we have a science if the theories that are available to our minds happen to be close to true. Well, there is no particular reason to suppose that the intersection of true theories and theories that are accessible to the mind is very large. It may not be very large.
And Poppy, remember that someday you will meet a frog who will turn into a handsome prince." "Good," Beatrix said. "Because all she's met so far are princes who turn into frogs." "Mr. Bayning is not a frog," Poppy protested. "You're right," Beatrix said. "That was very unfair to frogs, who are lovely creatures.
Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature.
Not a frog, I hope?” he asked…She shook her head. “No. And if it was I wouldn’t kiss it, I promise you. I might kiss a prince if I could be sure he’d turn into a frog, but not the other way around.
Frog said, 'I wrote 'Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend, Frog.' 'Oh,' said Toad, 'that makes a very good letter.'Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail. They sat there, feeling happy together.
It is ... a sign of the times-though our brothers of physics and chemistry may smile to hear me say so-that biology is now a science in which theories can be devised: theories which lead to predictions and predictions which sometimes turn out to be correct. These facts confirm me in a belief I hold most passionately-that biology is the heir of all the sciences.
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