Quotes by Edwin Abbott Abbott

“I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.””

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.””

“Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you.””

“In One Dimensions, did not a moving Point produce a Line with two terminal points?In two Dimensions, did not a moving Line produce a Square wit four terminal points?In Three Dimensions, did not a moving Square produce - did not the eyes of mine behold it - that blessed being, a Cube, with eight terminal points?And in Four Dimensions, shall not a moving Cube - alas, for Analogy, and alas for the Progress of Truth if it be not so - shall not, I say the motion of a divine Cube result in a still more divine organization with sixteen terminal points?Behold the infallible confirmation of the Series, 2, 4, 8, 16: is not this a Geometrical Progression? Is not this - if I might qupte my Lord's own words - "Strictly according to Analogy"?Again, was I not taught by my Lord that as in a Line there are two bonding points, and in a Square there are four bounding Lines, so in a Cube there must be six bounding Squares? Behold once more the confirming Series: 2, 4, 6: is not this an Arithmetical Progression? And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must have eight bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, "strictly according to analogy"?””

“Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows”

“All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State.””

“Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard.””

“Attend to your Configuration.””

“It fills all Space, and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness, ah, the happiness of Being!””

“Doubtless we cannot see that other higher Spaceland now, because we have no eye in our stomachs.””

“Moreover a blunt and stolid regard for literal truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises by which the more judicious Circle can in a moment pacify his consort. The result is massacre;””

“For why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished?””

“He prayeth well who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.He prayeth best that loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all. ””

“Once a Woman, always a Woman" is a Decree of Nature; and the very Laws of Evolution seem suspended in her disfavour. Yet at least we can admire the wise Prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessity of their existence and the basis of the constitution of Flatland.””

“The whole of the Targum deserves study as shewing how textual ambiguity or corruption may combine with doctrinal prepossession to modify tradition;Chapter II, Section 2, Paragraph 1171””