Top 10 Quotes by Edwin A. Abbott

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

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

Edwin A. Abbott

Dawn, Degrees, Firsts

Edwin A. Abbott, Thomas Banchoff, Seth Caplan, Jeffrey Travis, Dano Johnson (2009). “Flatland: The Movie Edition”, p.70, Princeton University Press

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.

Edwin A. Abbott

Hope, Self, Ignorant

Edwin A. Abbott, Thomas Banchoff, Seth Caplan, Jeffrey Travis, Dano Johnson (2009). “Flatland: The Movie Edition”, p.80, Princeton University Press

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Edwin A. Abbott

Our World, Space, Reader

Edwin A. Abbott, Thomas Banchoff, Seth Caplan, Jeffrey Travis, Dano Johnson (2009). “Flatland: The Movie Edition”, p.15, Princeton University Press

Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs... may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality.

Edwin A. Abbott

Race, Humanity, Mind

Edwin A. Abbott, William F. Lindgren, Thomas F. Banchoff (2010). “Flatland: An Edition with Notes and Commentary”, p.216, Cambridge University Press

Though we cannot SEE angles, we can INFER them, and this with great precision. Our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule or measure of angles.

Edwin A. Abbott

Sight, Long, Training

Edwin A. Abbott (2015). “Flatland”, p.21, Xist Publishing

Upward, not Northward

Edwin A. Abbott

Edwin A. Abbott (2015). “Flatland”, p.92, Xist Publishing

Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard.

Edwin A. Abbott

Numbers, Interest, Greater

Edwin A. Abbott, William F. Lindgren, Thomas F. Banchoff (2010). “Flatland: An Edition with Notes and Commentary”, p.72, Cambridge University Press

I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.

Edwin A. Abbott

Children, Husband, Half

Edwin A. Abbott (2015). “Flatland”, p.15, Xist Publishing

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.

Edwin A. Abbott

Mean, Class, Two

Edwin A. Abbott (2017). “Flatland”, p.17, BookRix