Edwin A. Abbott Quotes

He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best that loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State.

"Once a Woman, always a Woman" is a Decree of Nature; and the very Laws of Evolution seem suspended in her disfavour. Yet at least we can admire the wise Prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessity of their existence and the basis of the constitution of Flatland.

They speak about 'right' or 'wrong' as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human figure is really capable of choosing between them.

The whole of the Targum deserves study as shewing how textual ambiguity or corruption may combine with doctrinal prepossession to modify tradition;
Chapter II, Section 2, Paragraph 1171

so that even a Woman in reasonable health can journey several furlongs northward without much difficulty —

Like all great art, it defies the tyrant Time.

For why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished?

If our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a women is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.

It is considered a disgrace to any State that legislation should have to enforce what ought to be, and is in every respectable female, a natural instinct.

The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs round. After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board, the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial admitted into the class of Equilaterals. He is then immediately taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some childless Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child henceforth to enter his former home or so much as to look upon his relations again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may, by force of unconscious imitation, fall back again into his hereditary level.

In a word, to compost oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon oneself.

Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you.

Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality, for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.

إنّ الرضا عن الذات مرادف للانحطاط والجهل، وطموح المرء خيرٌ له من قناعة زائفة تعمي عينيه وتُغلّ يديه