Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of sciences; for discourse of illustration is cut off; recitals of examples are cut off; discourse of connection and order is cut off; descriptions of practice are cut off. So there remaineth nothing to fill the aphorisms but some good quantity of observation; and therefore no man can suffice, nor in reason will attempt, to write aphorisms, but he that is sound and grounded.
When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example – rather than by total abstraction – works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense – as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms – but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.)stephen jay gould
Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. the idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.edward bellamy
Chicken masala is now Britain's true national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences.Robin Cook
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?Henry James
A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.chauncey depew
To be sure, these witnesses provide an excellent illustration of textual dynamics, and they deepen our knowledge of the development of the Bible text in the technical sense.moshe goshen-gottstein
Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.werner heisenberg
If you cannot be great, be willing to serve God in that which is small. If you cannot do great things for Him, cheerfully do little ones. If you cannot be an Aaron to serve at the altar, or a Moses to guide the tribes, consent to be "a little maid" to Xaaman the Syrian, for the honor of God's prophets, or a little child, for Christ's sake, to be set by Him in the midst of the people, as an illustration of the sweetness of humility.Samuel Francis Smith
I shall draw... a figure (which all these matters are made clear as far as possible on a surface, but the full demonstration would require a body like the eye... The eye of a cow, pig, and other animals can be used for illustration, if anyone wishes to experiment.roger bacon
[I]f texts are unified by a central logic of argument, then their pictorial illustrations are integral to the ensemble, not pretty little trifles included only for aesthetic or commercial value. Primates are visual animals, and (particularly in science) illustration has a language and set of conventions all its own.stephen jay gould
If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.stephen jay gould
A work based only on a line concept is scarcely more than a illustration; it fails to achieve pictorial structure. Pictorial structure is based on a plane concept. The line originates in the meeting of two planes ... we can lose ourselves in a multitude of lines, if through them we lose our senses for the planes.hans hofmann
It is a great mistake to think any thing too profound or rich for a popular audience. No train of thought is too deep, or subtle, or grand but the manner of presenting it to their untutored minds should be peculiar. It should be presented in anecdote, or sparkling truism, or telling illustration, or stinging epithet; always in some concrete form, never in a logical, abstract, syllogistic shape.
I shall draw... a figure (which all these matters are made clear as far as possible on a surface, but the full demonstration would require a body like the eye... The eye of a cow, pig, and other animals can be used for illustration, if anyone wishes to experiment.
To be sure, these witnesses provide an excellent illustration of textual dynamics, and they deepen our knowledge of the development of the Bible text in the technical sense.
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
Because any arrangement of squares, circles, and connecting lines has limitations in what it may portray, the organization chart is best regarded as an illustration accompanying a description of the departments, boards, bureaus...
est training should not be thought of as a form of therapy, either. The employee in the illustration is not meant to be paranoid, with a persecution complex to be addressed in some form of treatment. est is not primarily for people with problems, and the company executives who have undergone est training have not typically been marginal performers, or members of companies experiencing difficulties.
Since pro means the opposite of con, can you give me an illustration? Progress and Congress.
Mr. Babbage's illustration powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure may be subordinate to a higher law which only permits it for a time, and in proper season interrupts and changes it.
After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.john ralston saul
[T]here is no longer a preponderance of military force that allows the West to impose its will, the U.S. defeat in Iraq being the most extraordinary illustration of that fact.
Marxism does not have, and does not even pretend to have, any mechanism to explain the internal development of the social system it describes as “Asiatic.” In these areas of traditionalist despotism, under which the larger part of the world’s population lived for thousands of years, Marx quite explicitly and admittedly found no class conflict, in the absence of opposing groups categorized as economic classes. (Change only came, as he puts in, when Western culture bursts in on them: an unconscious illustration of Marx’s Eurocentrism).karl marx