Ellipse In Quotes & Sayings

Directly down the lawn and accross the Ellipse from the White House are those ordered, classic lines of the Jefferson Memorial and the eyes of the 19-foot statue that gaze directly into the White House, a reminder to any of us who might occupy that mansion of the quality of mind and generosity of heart that once abided there and has been so rarely seen there again. — Ronald Reagan

If you think it is hard to get humans to follow traffic laws, imagine convincing an asteroid to move along an ellipse. — Stephen Hawking

Many a zero thinks it is the ellipse on which the Earth travels. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The ellipse is as aimless as that,
Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear
In our present. Its flexing is its account,
Return to the point of no return. — John Ashbery

[...] The movement of the celestial bodies can be given as an example. It is not exactly circular, but elliptic; the ellipse constitutes as it were a first "specification" of the circle, by the splitting of the center into two poles or "foci" in the direction of one of the diameters which thereafter plays a special "axial" part, while at the same time all the other diameters are differentiated one from another in respect of their lengths. It may be added incidentally in this connection that, since the planets describe ellipses of which the sun occupies one of the foci, the question arises as to what the other focus corresponds to; as there is nothing corporeal actually there, there must be something belonging only to the subtle order; but that question cannot be further examined here, as it would be quite outside our subject. — Rene Guenon

The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the two foci. — Johannes Kepler

He really ought to remember. . . . The airburst, if it happens, will be in visual range. Abstractions, math, models are fine, but when you're down to it and everybody's hollering for a fix, this is what you do: you go and sit exactly on the target with indifferent shallow trenches for shelter, and you watch it in the silent fire-bloom of its last few seconds, and see what you will see. Chances are astronomically against a perfect hit, of course, that is why one is safest at the center of the target area. Rockets are supposed to be like artillery shells, they disperse about the aiming point in a giant ellipse - the Ellipse of Uncertainty. But — Thomas Pynchon

Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other. — Victor Hugo

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other. — Victor Hugo

His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life. — Hermann Hesse

Now, the earth occupies one of the foci of the ellipse, and so at one point in its course is at its apogee, that is, at its farthest from the sun, — Jules Verne

To B-major or B-minor: that is the question. Consider that the major and minor chords are separated by the smallest tonal step which is one half-step carrying in its pitch the gravity of all humanity which needs the major to recognize its relative, inherent tragedy which once given expression seeks the resurrection that only the major can procreate which self-expression gives beauty to the harmony of the major which then confirms the whole truth of the tragic minor saga which overcomes the hidden hand of destiny in the great ellipse of being and the greater cosmic void of nothingness which passage of time has sadly destined to be replayed in the same octave of the ineluctable modality of the audible which ellipse with such a simple twist resonates as infinity which is both meaningless beyond all human capacity for understanding but which holds within it the ubiquitous mystic beauty and truth of the pulsing human heart. — David B. Lentz

If you make certain assumptions about the force of gravity, and how the weight of an object diminishes as it gets farther away, it's not improbable at all," Isaac said. "It just happens. You would keep going round and round forever." "In a circle?" "An ellipse." "An ellipse ... " and here the bomb finally went off in his head, and Daniel had to sit down on the ground, the moisture of last year's fallen apples soaking through his breeches. "Like a planet." "Just so - if only we could jump fast enough, or had a strong enough wind at our backs, we could all be planets. — Neal Stephenson