Catalog Quotes

“What caused me to undertake the catalog was the nebula I discovered above the southern horn of Taurus on September 12, 1758, while observing the comet of that year. ... This nebula had such a resemblance to a comet in its form and brightness that I endeavored to find others, so that astronomers would not confuse these same nebulae with comets just beginning to shine. I observed further with suitable refractors for the discovery of comets, and this is the purpose I had in mind in compiling the catalog.After me, the celebrated Herschel published a catalog of 2000 which he has observed. This unveiling the sky, made with instruments of great aperture, does not help in the perusal of the sky for faint comets. Thus my object is different from his, and I need only nebulae visible in a telescope of two feet [focal length].”

“Those unable to catalog the past are doomed to repeat it.”

“As a child, I was this record collector/listener that would sit in a room and listen to the entire Beatles catalog alone, over and over and over again.”

“But I didn't mind. I loved that everything was cataloged and ready to go and that I was technically now living and sleeping in a library.”

“I'm doing now with cornets exactly what I used to do with trilobites: measuring, analyzing and cataloging the myriad gradations of their forms.”

“A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty.”

“It's my job to know what's available from every retailer, catalog, website, antiques mall, and craftsperson. A good designer or decorator has to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge.”

“Napster hijacked our music without asking. They never sought our permission. Our catalog of music simply became available as free downloads on the Napster system.”

“Psychologists, for reasons of clinical necessity or vagaries of temperament, have chosen to dissect and catalog the morbid emotions - depression, anger, anxiety - and to leave largely unexamined the more vital, positive ones.”

“One learns a landscape finally not by knowing the name or identity of everything in it, but by perceiving the relationships in it--like that between the sparrow and the twig. The difference between the relationships and the elements is the same as that between written history and a catalog of events.”