Quotes & Sayings About Infinities

Some Infinities are greater than other Infinities — John Green

The human mind is our ultimate sense organ. Mind has discovered that there are invisible infinities hidden in light. Our perception of color projects the doubly infinite-dimensional space of physical color onto the three-dimensional wall of our inner Cave. — Frank Wilczek

Poor boy," the libertine then said, "he builds machines to count the infinite, and we have terrified him with the eternal silence of too many infinities. Voila, the end of a fine vocation. — Umberto Eco

We are beginning to learn that intangibles have more specific gravity than we suspected, that ideas can generate as much forward thrust as Atlas missiles. We may win a victory in exploring the infinities of outer space, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory unless we can also explore the infinities of our inner spirit. We have supersensitive thermographs to show us the slightest variations in skin temperature. No devices can teach us the irrelevance of skin color. WE can transplant a heart from one person to another in a brilliant feat of surgical virtuosity. Now we are ready to try it the hard way: transplanting understanding, compassion, and love from one person to another. — Lloyd Alexander

Love versus love. King, you're comparing infinities. There is no 'more.' That's not how love works. If it's love, it's infinite. You can't count it. — Tiffany Reisz

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. — John Green

There are two infinities: God and stupidity. — Edgard Varese

The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace. — Michel Houellebecq

How do you quantify love? Can you weigh it, measure it, pin it down with equations? If the sum of all experiences is really just the interaction of a finite soup of chemicals copulating in nerve endings, how did this even dare articulate the infinite?
Mathematicians will tell you there are different types of infinities. Some are countable, some are not. We can love someone more and more; we can stop loving. But we can never guess how much all this is. Love has no units. — Sean J Halford

I see the beauty of God's archetypal infinity reflected in the towers of infinities in set theory — Vern Poythress

Comparing infinities is a treacherous business — Brian Greene

Infinities are not for casual exploration. You could fall and keep falling. You could get lost. — Laini Taylor

Thus passing through the infinite varieties of space we reach the Divine space which is absolutely free from all dimensions and constitutes the meeting point of all infinities. — Muhammad Iqbal

Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things
like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I'd have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography. — Elizabeth Bishop

Before the work of Georg Cantor in the nineteenth century, the study of the infinite was as much theology as science; now, we understand Cantor's theory of multiple infinities, each one infinitely larger than the last, well enough to teach it to first-year math majors. (To be fair, it does kind of blow their minds.) — Jordan Ellenberg

It is a jungle where hierarchies of infinities tower like prehistoric beasts. — China Mieville

Some infinities are larger than other infinities, — John Green

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me — Gustave Flaubert

A relationship should not be measured in months or years. It's the calibre of the memories that matter. Their impact, their permanence, and the degree to which they change you. I've had relationships lasting years I can now scarcely recollect, and hours with others that feel like infinities. — Beau Taplin

Intellectually, perspective [drawing] is a breakthrough, because here, for the first time, the physical space we live in is being depicted as ifit were an abstract, mathematical space. A less obvious innovation due to perspective is that here, for the first time, people are actually drawing pictures of infinities. — Rudy Rucker

In the western philosophy you can't perceive infinities at every moment. It's not there to do. — Frederick Lenz

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

We have never observed infinity in nature. Whenever you have infinities in a theory, that's where the theory fails as a description of nature. And if space was born in the Big Bang, yet is infinite now, we are forced to believe that it's instantaneously, infinitely big. It seems absurd. — Janna Levin

There's a place this moment comes from, where it's made. Actually, it's like a big factory where they make moments, where they make realities, where they make infinities. — Frederick Lenz

All such uncertainties about undecidability and inconsistency apply only to mathematical structures with infinitely many elements. Are infinities, undecidability and potential inconsistency really inherent in the ultimate physical reality, or are they merely mirages, artifacts of our playing with fire and using powerful mathematical tools that are more convenient to work with than those that actually describe our Universe? More specifically, how well defined do mathematical structures need to be to be real, i.e., to be members of the Level IV multiverse? — Max Tegmark

Some infinities are simply bigger than other infinities. — John Green

There were millions of different infinities and they weren't only measured in time, but in people. And in each one, I could find a reason to matter forever. — Mackie Burt

People and their dwellings were such a thin dust on the surface of the globe, like invisible specks of bacteria on an orange, and the feeble lights of kebab shops and supermarkets failed utterly to register on the infinities of space above. — Michel Faber

Bound for your distant home"

Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I've known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, 'When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.'

But there, alas, where the sky
shines with blue radiance,
where olive-tree shadows lie
on the waters glittering dance,
your beauty, your suffering,
are lost in eternity.
But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
I wait for it: you owe it me ....... — Alexander Pushkin

He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud. — Victor Hugo

Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression as houses multiply to form a city of stark desolation. The sight of such endless avenues of fishy-eyed vacancy and death, and the thought of such linked infinities of black, brooding compartments given over to cob-webs and memories and the conqueror worm, start up vestigial fears and aversions that not even the stoutest philosophy can disperse. — H.P. Lovecraft

The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

Some infinities are much bigger than other infinities-the fault in our stars — John Green

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.
— John Donne

Realizing its fundamental importance in understanding spectral lines, in atomic physics and in the theory of how light and electrons interact, quantum electrodynamics, Pauli and Heisenberg were determined to derive it from quantum theory rather than introducing it from the start. They believed that if they could find a version of quantum electrodynamics capable of producing the fine structure constant, it would not contain the infinities that marred their theories. — Arthur I. Miller

Oh, how he missed his sister. Out of everyone, the legions of the dead, the numberless infinities of souls who had gone before, it was the loss of Ursula that had left him with the sorest heart. — Kate Atkinson

[Georg Cantor was the first to prove that there could be a series of infinities; that infinities come in an infinite number of sizes.] Thus Cantor's Absolute is a perfect image for what we experience of God. When I speak of a Big Enough God I am not merely thinking of an Infinite God, but the God of infinities, the Absolute, which either chooses to reveal itself or remains veiled in mystery. Modern mathematics does begin to feel like the language that God talks. — Sara Maitland

Despite the experimental success of the theory...the fact that the infinities occur at all continues to produce grumbling...Dirac in particular always referred to renormalization as sweeping the infinities under the rug. I disagreed with Dirac and argued the point with him at conferences at Coral Gables and Lake Constance. Taking account of the difference between the bare charge and mass of the electron and their measured values is not merely a trick that is invented to get rid of infinities; it is something we would have to do even if everything was finite. There is nothing arbitrary or ad hoc about the procedure; it is simply a matter of correctly identifying what we are actually measuring. — Steven Weinberg

Indeed, the history of 20th century physics was in large measure about how to avoid the infinities that crop up in particle theory and cosmology. The idea of point particles is convenient but leads to profound, puzzling troubles. — Gregory Benford

Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means. — Paul Gauguin

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful. — John Green

There are two infinities in this world: God up above, and down below, human baseness. — Jules De Goncourt

...sometimes when you are lost for direction, you are open to a new way of seeing. — Lauren Lola

I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

~ some infinities are bigger then other infinities~ okay. Okay~ the fault in our stars — John Green

Spontaneous storms, and changes in color that were not tied to changes in wind speeds, and fractal borders, bounded infinities scrolling inside each other. We were looking at a mind thinking. A mind feeling.
The woodwind glissando of the whale's cry. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A — John Green

Two infinities: the one that stretches to the beginning but never touches-when you halve and halve and halve, infinitely-and then the one that spreads out into the endless, endless future, the endless, endless, distance.The set of infinities that is itself infinite. — David Levithan

Look too on this poor planet of ours,
Torn by the storms of mysterious powers,
Evil contending with good from its birth,
Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,
Ah! what infinities circle us here,
Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere! — Martin Farquhar Tupper

Jesus Christ, who had all the power in the world, saw us enslaved by the very things we thought would free us ... He laid aside the infinities and immensities of His being and, at the cost of His life, paid the debt for our sins, purchasing us the only place our hearts can rest, in His Father's house. Knowing He did this will transform us from the inside out. — Timothy Keller

The marsh toads interviewed the eagle
'How come you venture so high?
Aren't you scared you'll hit the ceiling
That blue metal dome they call the sky?'

The eagle knew these earth-bound creatures
Were ignorant of
boundless space
And couldn't conceive
of infinities
Not being born to the wind's embrace."
From Bachchoo's Fables — Farrukh Dhondy

I mean,' he said with increasing vehemence, 'that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all. — G.K. Chesterton

It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. Some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes made in passing from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. Some day a new quantum mechanics, a relativistic one, will be discovered, in which we will not have these infinities occurring at all. It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted. — Paul Dirac

Our infinity is bigger than other infinities. — John Green

Infinities and indivisibles transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness; Imagine what they are when combined. — Galileo Galilei

Artschwager's art always involves looking closely at surfaces, questions what an object is, wants to make you forget the name of the thing you're looking at so that it might mushroom in your mind into something that triggers unexpected infinities. — Jerry Saltz