True Specific Gravity

Famous quotes containing the words specific gravity, true, specific and/or gravity:

    The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only like doing him good better than having him do me good, but also would rather have him do good to himself than to me; he does me most good when he does himself good.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

    I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
    Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
    Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
    musical, self-sufficient,
    I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
    Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
    Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
    island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
    They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.
    Derek Mahon (b. 1941)