Ideas have consequences.
Bright points in the sky or a blow on the head will equally cause one to see stars.
Imagination is as vital to any advance in science as learning and precision are essential for starting points.
That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what these beings may be.
There are celestial sights more dazzling, spectacles that inspire more awe, but to the thoughtful observer who is privileged to see them well, there is nothing in the sky so profoundly impressive as the canals of Mars. Fine lines and little gossamer filaments only, cobwebbing the face of the Martian disk, but threads to draw one's mind after them across the millions of miles of intervening void.
War is a survival among us from savage times and affects now chiefly the boyish and unthinking element of the nation.
Are physical forces alone at work there, or has evolution begotten something more complex, something not akin to what we know on Earth as life? It is in this that lies the peculiar interest of Mars.
I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers-- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one-- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it-- along with first dibs on the new books.
If it were possible for any one person or group of persons to go through a photographic finishing plant's work at the end of a day, you could probably pull out the most extraordinary photographic exhibition we've ever seen. On almost any subject. The trouble is to find the things.
So, when I thought June might take you away, I didn’t know what to do. I felt like she was taking everything that mattered to me. I felt like she was taking away from you all the things that I didn’t have. That’s why I’m sorry. I’m sorry because you shouldn’t have to be everything to me. I had you, but I’d forgotten that I had myself too.
To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak.