academics-from-ireland

"So long as was encumbered with its pseudo-classical incubus its votaries were few in number. The more it grew into a science founded on observation, the more it attracted popular attention. The writings of , composed in a clear and elegant style, and offering a systematic arrangement such as all could readily understand, contributed more than those of any other naturalist to the spread of a taste for his favourite science. He was eminently a popular writer, and, no matter what criticism may now be passed on his system, it must be admitted that to it is greatly owing the rapidity with which the natural sciences advanced in public favour in the early part of last century."

"In 1853 Harvey started on a prolonged tour to the East; his route included Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and sundry of the islands of the Pacific, and he returned ultimately by way of and Panama. The journey was originally undertaken in the interests of the and resulted in a large addition to its treasures. His extensive collections contained a huge mass of material, all of which was practically new. He took all available opportunities of exploring the of the different coasts to which he had access and amassed such a wealth of material that the collection was unequalled by any other of the time. The use he made of it is shown by the great Phycologia Australica which occupied him for five years after his return."

"The name }} is assigned by botanists to a large group or natural class of ic or flowerless plants, which form the principal and characteristic vegetation of the waters. The sea, in no climate from the s to the , is altogether free from them, though they abound on some shores much more than on others, a subject which will come particularly under notice when we speak of the distribution of their several tribes. Species abound likewise in fresh water, whether running or stagnant, and in mineral springs. The strongly impregnated sulphureous streams of Italy,—the eternal snows of the and regions,—and the of Iceland, have each their peculiar species ; and even chemical solutions, if long kept, produce Algae. Very few, comparatively, inhabit stations which are not submerged or exposed to the constant dripping of water; and, in all situations where they are found, great dampness, at least, is necessary to their production."

"Are sorrows hard to bear,—the ruin Of flowers, the rotting of red fruit, A love’s decease, a life’s undoing, And summer slain, and song-birds mute, And skies of snow and bitter air? These things, you deem, are hard to bear.But ah, the burden, the delight Of dreadful joys! Noon opening wide, Golden and great; the gulfs of night, Fair deaths, and rent veils cast aside, Strong soul to strong soul rendered up, And silence filling like a cup."

"Even the most elementary research reveals that Paul derived his titles for Christ from Jewish messianic expectation. Confrontation with Rome was an unforeseen consequence."

"It is not many years since the production of such a pillar would have been impossibility in the largest foundries of the world, and even now there are comparatively few where a similar mass of metal could be turned out."

"The «Hellenes» amaze us because, although open to the spiritual disturbances of their age, they turned to ancient methods to find a solution to the anxieties of the present. Their placid faith in a tradition stemming from Plato and continually evolving was perhaps the most reassuring aspect of late ancient civilization. In fact, many classical and enlightened societies had collapsed under the weight of their own traditionalism, leaving immediate successors only a memory of anxieties and nightmares. If this did not happen in the Roman Empire, it was largely due to the "Hellenic Renaissance" and the dialogue between its proponents and the new Christian aristocratic intellectuals. (Part 1, chapter II, pp. 56-57)"

"Peter Brown, The Late Antique World. (The World of Late Antiquity. From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad), translation by Maria Vittoria Malvano, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Turin, C.E.1974. ISBN 88-06- 38901-7"

"The "golden age" is the exception, normal history is "grey"."

"[...] the model of Charlemagne's renewed Roman empire was not Augustus, but Justinian, the devout Catholic depicted in the mosaics of San Vitale. Justinian was the direct, if inadvertent, ancestor of the idea that a "Christian republic", a Holy Roman Empire, would always exist in Western Europe to serve the interests of the papacy and to ensure the libertas of the Catholic church . (Part 2, chapter I, p. 108)"

"Benedict XVI is right when he says that the West has "become Christian". The equation "Christian=Western", historically, is blasphemy."

"We Europeans have guiltily built the fracture between Europe and Islam, while instead the roots of these two worlds have been intertwined for a millennium."

"Having supported the relationship between the visible and the invisible, between the inexpressible internal world and its significant manifestation in the external world, having asserted that the soul was able to give meaning to natural things: this was the service rendered by Plotinus to his contemporaries and successors. (Part One, chapter II, p. 59)"

"We must candidly admit that we have created a 'dark age' to feel superior to the past."

"Plotinus he had attempted to deepen his knowledge of the exotic philosophy of the Persians and Indians. Only later in life did he indulge, with ever greater tranquility, in Plato's ancient dialectics. The appeal of his writings comes from being the work of a troubled and anxious man who found his way through harsh, rational discipline and achieved calm and clarity in adulthood. (Part 1, chapter II, p. 57)"

"800 miles south of the Byzantine frontier, in Mecca, a city of the Hejaz, a middle-aged man, after a mediocre career as a merchant, began wandering disconsolately among the sinister hills outside the city. In C.E.610, this man, Muhammad, began to have visions. He narrated these visions in metrical form and constituted his Qur'an, "recitation". Strengthened by these experiences he gathered a community around himself: the Umma, the "people of Allah". Within twenty years Muhammad and his Umma had established themselves as rulers of Mecca and nearby Medina, and as the main party of the Arabian Peninsula. (Part 2, chapter III, p. 155)"

"His parting shot is that “in the post 2011 period it became clear that the country needed a party with the basic principles of the PDs”. Nothing could be further from the truth."

"They crossed a metal suspension bridge over a canal. Both sides of the structure bristled with padlocks. Some of the brass locks had felt-tipped names written on them. 'Don + Gwen', 'Micky & Minnie', 'Leo n Leonora'. One had a message written on it. 'Graham and Vickey. I love you more than Coco Pops.' "It must be some kind of love fest," Gerry said. "Clamped for ever." "Have you seen this kinda thing before?" "I've heard of it." "It'll be the young ones." "Trendy ones.""

"Now that they had mobile phones, theoretically it should have been easier to keep tabs on one another. But practically it had not helped. In the first instance you had to remember to bring the bloody thing with you. If you had it with you, invariably one or other of the mobiles was switched off or needed charging. And then, even if you did get through, Stella's phone had some mysterious setting which diverted incoming calls straight to 'Leave a message'. And her phone did not ring. And she did not answer it."

"A thing that really took his breath away was Norman Foster's roof over the Great Court at the British Museum - the audacity and brilliance of it. The approach inside the building from a periphery of darkness into the thrilling light at its centre - the largest covered square in Europe - was utterly wonderful."

"How can something be utterly simple and amazingly complex at the same time? Things are simple or complex according to how much attention is paid to them."

"In a Portstewart guest house her father liked to play tricks when he had eaten his egg. He would put the shell upside down in someone else's eggcup. The McKennas would sit and watch the next person lift a spoon and cave in the top of the hollow egg."

"You sit down to your desk and listen to what's inside your head. Things appear suddenly and unexpectedly. I don't mean it's like inspiration or anything like that but, put it this way, you are there with a 3B pencil in your hand should you hear anything good. If you are in a notion of working, the idea takes root and won't let you go. It puts out twigs and branches. These twigs get leaves and thorns and maybe, if you are lucky, blossoms. And fruit. [...] The worst thing that can happen at a time like this is an interruption. When the interruption is over it's very hard to get the same momentum going again."

"It's all going far too well," said Gerry. "A bad omen."

"I wish I was artistic," said Liz, "then I could be temperamental."

"The island kids had TV, radio. Their remote surroundings were seen as a deprivation, not something to be enjoyed. They felt cut off from the mainstream. To be on an island was a source of discontent, not as good as the mainland."

"She found a large and classy department store. Like any other city, Amsterdam was full of shops which sold things that nobody wanted. Or the kind of things some people wanted but nobody needed."

""Alcohol is the rubber tyres between me and the pier." He held up his glass to her. They chinked."

"Since Belfast, he always sat in a chair facing the door."

"When they finally got into the foyer there were some enlarged black and white photographs. Anne in her school playground before the war. Anne in the street with friends. Anne at a desk, writing."

"Look, see, behold. Above all, listen."

"Stella was telling the clerk that there was a Catholic church in the heart of the red-light district called 'Our Dear Lord in the Attic'. "Would there be Mass there?" "No, I do not think so." The clerk shook his head. "It is now a museum." "All religion should be in museums," Gerry said."

""The individual matters," said Mrs Gallagher."

"Cal, the world is full of gulpins who don't care who they hurt."

"Are you a conduit for the music?"

"He put his feet up on the mantelpiece and leaned back in the chair. He thought about how things happened to him but he brought nothing about. What he needed was self-discipline. His mother had ruled her own life with a hand of iron. She did everything she should do, getting up at seven and walking a mile to mass every day no matter what the weather; if she wanted one thing badly she did without others; if what she wanted was spiritual she denied her body. In Lent she took black tea and weighed her morsels of food on scales and for six weeks wouldn't let a sweet cross her lips although she loved them. She sent money abroad to her working sisters while at night she sat with a wooden mushroom darning her stockings with a criss-cross brown thread. She worked so her family would not want and Cal had never wanted while she was alive. He got a sense of a new life, a new start now that he had officially moved into the cottage. He would discipline himself. He felt a surge of his own power to direct his life into whatever path he wanted. There were six cigarettes left in his packet and he lit one and smoked it with a decadent pleasure, knowing it to be his last. The rest he threw into the fire."

"If you have a war on your hands you send for the Mr Crillys of this world. The hard men and the bandits are the real revolutionaries, if you see what I mean. They get things done, they punch the hole for us to get through later."

"Suddenly a police Land Rover with its hee-haw siren blaring swung into the main road behind them with a squeal of tyres. It roared along and overtook them so fast its body tilted at an angle to the chassis. Someone said, "Jesus, they'll sell no ice cream going at that speed.""

"We went on a school trip down the Rhine one summer and I saw a crucifixion that made all others pale for me. It was a painting. And it was the first thing like that which had any effect on me. I stood and stared at it for so long the teachers lost me and had to come back for me."

"Love is a very strange idea. I never know what it is. When you were young it seemed to be all intensity and no opportunity. Later when you did get the opportunity the fire had gone out of it."

"Do you still want to - refuse to help?" "I'm afraid so." "Not to act - you know - is to act. By not doing anything you are helping to keep the Brits here."

""Once you've been through a tragedy you're scared of it ever after," Mrs Morton said."

"What about you?" "I would like to see a united Ireland, but I haven't decided the best way to go about it yet." "I feel sorry for it." "What?" "Ireland. It's like a child. It's only concerned with the past and the present. The future has ceased to exist for it."

"Violence is a bit like antibodies. Small doses build up until you can reject and be immune to the most horrific events."

"It was a way of not thinking - to concentrate on her surroundings. If she stared at things, then it helped block out stuff."

"Purring was the funniest thing, like a motorbike in the distance."

"When she met men the first things she took account of were the negative things. Wimpishness, a bully, shiftiness, recklessness, elaborate facial hair."

"Sometimes I have difficulty with the avant-garde. There's a gallery in London I've been to and it's difficult to tell what's going on. A bag of nails, a ladder, a hammer - a crisp bag in the corner. Is it an exhibition or are they preparing an exhibition? Is the artist asking me to pay attention to something trivial or important?"

"She smiled to prove everything was all right. It was an odd device, this rearrangement of muscles of the face which said everything is all right. No need to enquire within. It could be used as a barrier to fend off emotional intruders."

"On a slippery slope the only way was down."