examples of amorphous solids

How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle? ~Katherine Mansfield, Bliss and Other Stories



I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have no laws at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759



I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike? ~Jean Cocteau



They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards. ~Creighton W. Abrams



I moved to New York City for my health. I'm paranoid and New York was the only place where my fears were justified. ~Anita Weiss



All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth. ~William Mathews



Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! ~Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger



The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. ~George Bernard Shaw



"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately." ~A.A. Milne



I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying. ~George Bird Evans, Troubles with Bird Dogs



I hate women because they always know where things are. ~Voltaire



Diogenes struck the father when the son swore. ~Robert Burton, "Anatomy of Melancholy," Democritus to the Reader, 1621



Much of your pain is self-chosen. ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923



I represent what is left of a vanishing race, and that is the pedestrian.... That I am still able to be here, I owe to a keen eye and a nimble pair of legs. But I know they'll get me someday. ~Will Rogers



I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies. ~Will Rogers



We loved with a love that was more than love. ~Edgar Allan Poe



Life... is like a box of chocolates - a cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that no one ever asks for, unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck with mostly undefinable whipped mint crap, mindlessly wolfed down when there's nothing else to eat while you're watching the game. Sure, once is a while you get a peanut butter cup or an English toffee but it's gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. In the end, you are left with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, which, if you are desperate enough to eat, leaves nothing but an empty box of useless brown paper. ~The X-Files



It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home. ~Carl T. Rowan



I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. ~John D. Rockefeller, Jr.