Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
Interpretation
Coal serves as a powerful means of transporting heat and energy across vast distances, playing a crucial role in industrial development.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the transformative power of coal, illustrating how it enables the transportation of heat from tropical regions to colder areas, thus altering climates and fostering industrial growth. This powerful resource not only conveys warmth but also enhances productivity and comfort, showcasing its significance in enabling civilization to thrive in diverse environments.
In practice
In a speech on energy resources, I might say, 'As Emerson noted, coal is a portable climate, enabling us to create warmth and foster industry in even the coldest regions.'
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.
I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the "race is for the strong" and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.
Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.
A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.
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