Edwin Abbott Quotes & Sayings

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. — Edwin A. 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. — Edwin A. Abbott

Attend to your Configuration. — Edwin A. Abbott

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! — Edwin A. Abbott

Doubtless we cannot see that other higher Spaceland now, because we have no eye in our stomachs. — Edwin A. Abbott

I neglected my clients and my own business to give myself to the contemplation of the mysteries which I had once beheld, yet which I could impart to no one, and found daily more difficult to reproduce even before my own mental vision. — Edwin A. Abbott

It is only now and then in some very remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian may still discover a square house. — Edwin A. Abbott

If our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a women is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with. — Edwin A. Abbott

To be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, ans that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impoitently happy. — Edwin A. Abbott

Either this is madness or it is Hell." "It is neither," calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, "it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily. — Edwin A. Abbott

You are not a man, but a feminine monstrosity with a bass voice! — Edwin A. Abbott

Few are the hearts whose happy lot it is at once to recognize in each other's voices the partner intended for them by Providence, and to fly into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. With most of us the courtship is of long duration. — Edwin A. Abbott

Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard. — Edwin A. Abbott

To comport oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon oneself. — Edwin A. Abbott

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. — Edwin A. Abbott

Learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.. — Edwin A. Abbott

Upward, not Northward — Edwin A. Abbott

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 — Edwin A. Abbott

Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen. — Edwin A. Abbott

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; — Edwin A. Abbott

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. — Edwin A. Abbott

[W]alking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me, I have been occasionally compelled to remain stationary for hours together, waiting till the rain came before continuing my journey. — Edwin A. Abbott

It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon; the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on. — Edwin A. Abbott

Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the seal of its approval upon Regularity of conformation. — Edwin A. Abbott

Though we cannot SEE angles, we can INFER them, and this with great precision. Our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule or measure of angles. — Edwin A. Abbott

Like all great art, it defies the tyrant Time. — Edwin A. Abbott

Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you. — Edwin A. Abbott

In a word, to comport oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon oneself. Such at least is the painful teaching of my experience. — Edwin A. Abbott

Spaceland, whose appreciation has, with unexpected celerity, required a — Edwin A. Abbott

Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs ... may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality. — Edwin A. Abbott

Nietzsche said we will never rid ourselves of God because we have too much faith in grammar/language.

Lacan said because of the religious tenets of language, religion will triumph.

Chomsky, master linguist, says 'there are no skeptics. You can discuss it in a philosophy seminar but no human being can - in fact - be a skeptic.'

These musings shed light on Soren K's leap to faith idea. This is more nuanced than the circular leap of faith argument he's been wrongly accused of...

Soren is saying that, as we use the logic of language to express existence and purpose, we will always leap TO faith in a superior, all encompassing, loving force that guides our lives.

This faith does not negate our reason. It simply implies that the reasoning of this superior force is superior to our own. Edwin Abbott crystalizes this in Flatland. — Chester Elijah Branch