#pang

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#alike #chiefly #endures #however #intensity

Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly. ↗

— Alfred Russel Wallace

#every #fresh #into #only #pangs

For Paley, a watch is purposeful and thus must have been created by a being with a purpose. A watch needs a watchmaker, just as a world needs a world-maker—God. Yet both Wallace and Paley might have heeded the lesson from Voltaire's Candide (1759), in which Dr. Pangloss, a professor of "metaphysico-theology-cosmolonigology," through reason, logic, and analogy "proved" that this is the best of all possible worlds: '"Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches" (1985, p. 238). The absurdity of this argument was intended on the part of the author, for Voltaire firmly rejected the Panglossian paradigm that all is best in the best of all possible worlds. Nature is not perfectly designed, nor is this the best of all possible worlds. It is simply the world we have, quirky, contingent, and flawed as it may be. ↗

— Michael Shermer

#logic #pangloss #design

The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors. ↗

— Ivor Novello

#british actors #deliberate #emotion #many #must

You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#death #envy #god #heart #lungs

It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love. ↗

— Voltaire

#love #pangloss #voltaire #love

Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too? ↗

— Bill Veeck

#before #every #game #income #income taxes

I don't have any pangs to where I want to be with the Broncos. ↗

— John Elway

#i #pangs #want #where

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order. ↗

— Christopher Lasch

#breakdown #concealing #crisis #effect #moral

The scene was not a happy one yet we looked upon it in the cold stoical spirit of a soldier; a slight chilling pang and then a return soul and body to the enemy before us. ↗

— Knute Nelson

#body #chilling #cold #enemy #happy