Wife Quotes (4)
All that comes above the surface [of the globe] lies within the province of Geography; all that comes below that surface lies inside the realm of Geology. The surface of the earth is that which, so to speak, divides them and at the same time 'binds them together in indissoluble union.' We may, perhaps, put the case metaphorically. The relationships of the two are rather like that of man and wife. Geography, like a prudent woman, has followed the sage advice of Shakespeare and taken unto her 'an elder than herself; but she does not trespass on the domain of her consort, nor could she possibly maintain the respect of her children were she to flaunt before the world the assertion that she is 'a woman with a past.'
Proceedings of the Geological Society of London (1903), 59, lxxviii.
See also: | Advice (9) | Divide (2) | Domain (3) | Earth (98) | Geography (11) | Geology (114) | Man (115) | Metaphor (4) | Past (10) | Relationship (12) | William Shakespeare (20) | Surface (8) | Union (3) | Woman (18)
Few males achieve any real freedom in their sexual relations even with their wives. Few males realise how badly inhibited they are on these matters.
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), 545.
I admit that Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev.
Mendeleev advised the Tsar on matters of oil and other chemical products. A prominent bureaucrat in a similar situation, cited Mendeleev's bigamy to win his own pardon from the Czar. This reputed reply indicates the importance of Mendeleev to the Czar. Mendeleev had remarried too soon after his divorce from his first wife, without waiting the seven years required by the Russian civil and ecclesiastic laws of the time. The Orthodox priest, whom Mendeleev had bribed to perform the marriage, was defrocked. In Robert L. Weber, Droll Science (1987), 17. Earlier accounts in Ralph Oesper, The Human Side of Scientists (1975), 129, and Eduard Färber, Great Chemists (1961), 726. The Czar is identified as Alexander III in Michael D. Gordin, A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table, which references the quotation to O. E. Ozarovskoi, D. I. Mendeleev v vospominaniiakh, 139. Webmaster has seen only anecdotal sources, and reserves judgment regarding the historical accuracy of the quotation.
TO MY WIFE-who made the writing of my previous book a pleasure and writing of the present one a necessity.
Boranes in Organic Chemistry (1972), dedication.
