Henri Becquerel Quotes

I have to keep going, as there are always people on my track. I have to publish my present work as rapidly as possible in order to keep in the race. The best sprinters in this road of investigation are Becquerel and the Curies ... ~ Ernest Rutherford

[Concerning] phosphorescent bodies, and in particular to uranium salts whose phosphorescence has a very brief duration. With the double sulfate of uranium and potassium ... I was able to perform the following experiment: One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative. One can repeat the same experiments placing a thin pane of glass between the phosphorescent substance and the paper, which excludes the possibility of chemical action due to vapors which might emanate from the substance when heated by the sun's rays. One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduces silver salts.

[Although the sun is irrelevant, and he misinterprets the role of phosphorescence, he has discovered the effect of radioactivity.] ~ Henri Becquerel

Pierre Curie voluntarily exposed his arm to the action of radium for several hours. This resulted in damage resembling a burn that developed progressively and required several months to heal. Henri Becquerel had by accident a similar burn as a result of carrying in his vest pocket a glass tube containing radium salt. He came to tell us of this evil effect of radium, exclaiming in a manner at once delighted and annoyed: "I love it, but I owe it a grudge." ~ Marie Curie

A man must be master of himself and master of his word to achieve the full realization of himself as an artist. ~ Robert Henri

Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way. ~ Henri Matisse

The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Sustainable development is a fundamental break that's going to reshuffle the entire deck. There are companies today that are going to dominate in the future simply because they understand that. ~ Francois-Henri Pinault

I paint things as they are. I don't comment. ~ Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom. ~ Henri Nouwen

They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion! ~ Henri Barbusse

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age. ~ Henri Nouwen

As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their "right" place. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Lifting our cup means sharing our life so we can celebrate it. When we truly believe we are called to lay down our lives for our friends, we must dare to take the risk to let others know what we are living. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

The great temptation of our lives is to deny our role as chosen people and to allow ourselves to be trapped in the worries of our daily lives. Without the word that keeps lifting us up as God's chosen people, we remain, or become, small people, stuck in the complaints that emerge from our daily struggle to survive. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Joy is hidden in sorrow and sorrow in joy. If we try to avoid sorrow at all costs, we may never taste joy, and if we are suspicious of ecstasy, agony can never reach us either. Joy and sorrow are the parents of our spiritual growth. ~ Henri Nouwen

The "distant country" is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be. ~ Henri Nouwen

But he realized Henri already knew all he'd ever need. He knew he was loved and he knew how to love. ~ Louise Penny

Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I am alone all day, I read a little but it gives me a headache. I draw and I paint, as much as I can, so much so that my hand gets tired and when it begins to get dark I wait to see if Jeanne d'Armagnac [one of the cousins] will come and sit by my bed. She comes sometimes and tries to distract me and play with me, and I listen to her speak without daring to look at her, she is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful. ~ Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

Ideas rose in clouds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. ~ Henri Poincare

Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. ~ Henri Nouwen

In Christ we live as God's beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that. Jean ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does. ~ Henri Poincare

If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning ... and ask yourself whether this situation is truly God given. Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain. To live a disciplined life is to live in such a way that you want only to be where God is with you. The more deeply you live your spiritual life, the easier it will be to discern the difference between living with God and living without God, and the easier it will be to move away from the places where God is no longer with you. ~ Henri Nouwen

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God's unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Because life is very small, you can never see it happening. Have you ever seen a tree actually grow? Can you see a child grow? Growth is too gentle, too tender. Life is basically hidden. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. ~ Henri Matisse

How I waited for you! How I longed for you! he stammered. "I thought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile was everywhere." He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when people were talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, It would go through my heart like an electric current. ~ Henri Barbusse

Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures. ~ Henri Poincare

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: 'What is my poverty?' Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! 'How blessed are the poor,' Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.
We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is not a slight thing, gentlemen, to force a man to say what he is, or what he believes himself to be; for that supreme word of man, that single expression which he utters of and upon himself is decisive. It lays down the basis upon which all judgment of him is to be formed. From that moment all the acts of his life must correspond to the answer given by him. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them. ~ Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach

Television is obviously an enormous intruder. Quite often people say they have no time, but in fact they waste a lot of time on things that are not healthy. ~ Henri Nouwen

Being satisfied: this is the general model of being and living whose promoters and supporters do not appreciate the fact that it generates discontent. For the quest for satisfaction and the fact of being satisfied presuppose the fragmentation of 'being' into activities, intentions, needs, all of them well-defined, isolated, separable and separated from the Whole. Is this an art of living? A style? No. It is merely the result and the application to daily life of a management technique and a positive knowledge directed by market research. The economic prevails even in a domain that seemed to elude it: it governs lived experience. ~ Henri Lefebvre

What is our task in this world as children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus? Our task is reconciliation. Wherever we go we see divisions among people - in families, communities, cities, countries, and continents. All these divisions are tragic reflections of our separation from God. The truth that all people belong together as members of one family under God is seldom visible. Our sacred task is to reveal that truth in the reality of everyday life. Why is that our task? Because God sent Jesus to reconcile us with God and to give us the task of reconciling people with one another. As people reconciled with God through Jesus we have been given the ministry of reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5:18). So whatever we do the main question is, Does it lead to reconciliation among people? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Without hard work, talent is not enough ~ Henri Mattise ~ Katrina Jack

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Nash's genius was of that mysterious variety more often associated with music and art than with the oldest of all sciences. It wasn't merely that his mind worked faster, that his memory was more retentive, or that his power of concentration was greater. The flashes of intuition were non-rational. Like other great mathematical intuitionists - Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, Jules Henri Poincaré, Srinivasa Ramanujan - Nash saw the vision first, constructing the laborious proofs long afterward. ~ Sylvia Nasar

Men do not sufficiently realize
that their future is in their own hands.
Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not.
Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live,
or intend to make just the extra effort required
for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet,
the essential function of the universe,
which is a machine for the making of gods. ~ Henri Bergson

Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life ... We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him. ~ Henri Nouwen

Still, as long as you keep pointing to the specifics, you will miss the full meaning of your pain. You will deceive yourself into believing that if the people, circumstances, and events had been different, your pain would not exist. This might be partly true, but ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It's wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

All I care about these days is painting - photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments. ~ Henri Bergson

People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

This harmony that human intelligence believes it discovers in nature - does it exist apart from that intelligence? No, without doubt, a reality completely independent of the spirit which conceives it, sees it or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so exterior as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us. But what we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, that which is common to several thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we will see, can be nothing but the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. ~ Henri Poincare