Richard Holmes Quotes
Physical vision - one might say scientific vision - brings about a metaphysical shift in the observer's view of reality as a whole. The geography of the earth, or the structure of the solar system, are in an instant utterly changed, and forever. The explorer, the scientific observer, . . . Read more

-Richard Holmes
He (the British soldier) is generally beloved by two sorts of Companion, in whores and lice, for both these Vermin are great admirers of a Scarlet Coat.

-Richard Holmes
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There is a goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting. Yet there should be, as they are twin sisters, twin powers, and walk on either side of us, disputing for sovereignty over us and who we are, all the way until death.

-Richard Holmes
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Most people today couldn't tell a bombardier from a brigadier" - said during a lecture in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund in 2009

-Richard Holmes
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Finally, Herschel completely perplexed the poet by remarking that many distant stars had probably 'ceased to exist' millions of years ago, and that looking up into the night sky we were seeing a stellar landscape that was not really there at all. The sky was full of ghosts. 'The light . . . Read more

-Richard Holmes
One of the wilder proselytizers, a Scandinavian geologist Henrick Steffens, was said to have stated that ‘The diamond is a piece of carbon that has come to its sense.’ To which a Scottish geologist, probably John Playfair gave the legendary reply, ‘Then a quartz, therefore, must . . . Read more

-Richard Holmes
People today do not know the difference between a bombardier and a brigadier

-Richard Holmes
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