Georg Cantor

“ Continuous curves with no tangents are not easy to imagine; yet we cannot deny their existence merely because it puts too great a strain on our imagination. Neither can we deny that there are as many points in a cube as on one of its sides, for Cantor has proved that such is indeed the case.
It is the same in physics. Experiment presents us with certain facts which we may often interpret in various ways. But we cannot ignore the facts merely because they happen to conflict with our own particular philosophy. ”

“ Sara
See, Yosele, he didn’t forget he’s a son from a Cantor.
Cantor
What kind English acting are you doing uptown?
Jack
Papa, it’ll take some time to explain. It’s hard to tell you in a few words. Can’t we wait until after a while—
Cantor
It ain’t hard I should tell you the work I’m doing. I sing to God. I pray. It ain’t hard to tell the kind work your mama is doing. She is a Cantor’s wife. She worships the Almighty. She knows the sorrows what has come to the descendants from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, to the children of Israel. She is living to be a good wife of a Cantor.... ”

“ And the next day out he repeated the same thing and says: "Ohh!" And when he did it the third day, I went over to him—I said, "Mister, please excuse me for butting in, but I want to help you. Tell me, why—why do you keep moaning like that?" He says "Oh, it's already the third day I'm on the wrong train. Agh!"
Well, I think I'll sing again now. It won't hurt. Mr. Olsen, again, won't you play a little something for Eddie?
Song: "Oh, Gee, Georgie" ()
Eddie Cantor
Georgie Porgie is a guy who is very bashful and so shy,
The ladies prize him,
They idolize him. ”

“ Cantor was not the man to babble. He was not the man to boast loosely to any living creature, most of all a woman. But Cantor had confided in her; that was patent.... But one conclusion was open to Potter, and that was based on the fact, often repeated in literature and in life, that there is one moment when a man will tell a woman anything....
Hildegarde, slender, boyish, brightly flaming Hildegarde, had known that moment. In every man lies sleeping a potential killer of his fellow-man. ”

“ Cantor laughed. He understood, and, being an opportunist, availed himself of the opportunity. “What’s it to you?” he said. “Miss von Essen can choose her—friends.... What’s there to rave about?... If a pretty girl throws herself at your head, do you call a policeman?”
It was confirmation; the thing was past doubting. Potter got to his feet just as Hildegarde returned with her wetted handkerchief, which she would have applied to his wounded head, but he repulsed her, would not let her touch him, and stood wavering dizzily. ”

“ In 1613 he was invited to be Capellmeister at Weimar, but held this post for only two years. On the death of Seth Calvisius in 1615 he obtained the appointment of Cantor to the Thomas-Schule in Leipzig, which post he held till his death in 1630. ”

“ In Germany, Professor Clemens of Bonn, was universally believed to be the author of this article, which excited great attention; so firmly was it held, that Professor Moritz Cantor, in a notice of the present work, gave no credence to our discovery, but stated in his critique, “The anonymous writer was not Olivieri, but Professor Clemens of Bonn.” [412] Upon this we sent Professor Cantor the essay from the “Historisch-politischen Blättern” and Bonora’s work for examination, when he was constrained to be convinced by the sight of his own eyes. ”

“ Peter Cantor assures us that they were built out of exactions on the poor, out of the unhallowed gains of usury, and out of the lies and deceits of the quæstuarii or pardoners; and the vast sums lavished upon them, he assures us, would be much better spent in redeeming captives and relieving the necessities of the helpless. [14]
It was hardly to be expected that prelates such as filled most of the sees of Christendom should devote themselves to the real duties of their position. Foremost among these duties was that of preaching the word of God and instructing their flocks in faith and morals. ”

“ I have already said that the populace of Canton is the most violent, the most stupid, and the most inconsistent in the whole universe; and I am going to give a proof of this. When the Chinese meet in the American garden, or in the narrow alleys of the factories, any beautiful child of the Saxon race with auburn hair and blue eyes, or any beautiful little boy as rosy as a cupid of Watteau, they crowd around these charming little creatures with benevolent curiosity ”

“ I sympathise with the position of the English merchants at Canton. It is not a pleasant thing to live on the borders of a river, and not to have a distance of two miles for exercise. At all events it would not suit me, who am fond of exercise, and I should be most glad to see them in the course of being emancipated from that state of duress in which they are placed at Canton. One of my reasons for regretting that which is being done is, that it tends to retard indefinitely any such extension of the liberty of my countrymen. ”

“ Fortunately the recent developments of arithmetic at the hands of such men as Weierstrass, Cantor, and Dedekind seem to have definitely refuted the Kantian view as far as general arithmetic, the pure science of number, is concerned, by proving that one and all of its propositions are analytic in the strict sense of the word, that is, that they are capable of rigid deduction from self-evident premises, so that, in what regards arithmetic, we may say with Schröder that the famous Kantian question "how are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" ”

“ The years following his coronation in Rome saw four serious revolts in Germany; not till 1033 was real order restored in Conrad's kingdom.
There was another power that Canute could not afford to antagonise or even ignore: no mediæval monarch could long flourish if he overlooked the needs of the Church. During the first years of his English kingship, Canute does not seem to have sought to conciliate the clergy; but after a few years he apparently adopted a new policy and strove to ally himself with the priesthood. It was as king of England that he first succeeded in forming such an alliance ”

“ Now, I suggest the extremely unlikely possibility that Tristram Shandy, by reflection on his own life and literary labours, was led to the correct course of accepting the paradox which resulted from this reflection and rejecting the Achilles. Thus, he concluded that an infinite whole may be similar (or, in Cantor’s terminology, “equivalent”) to a proper part of itself, and hence, by a confusion of similarity with identity (or equivalence with equality) which he shares with some subsequent philosophers, [86] that a whole may be equal to a proper part of itself. ”

“ Nor would anyone have expected the world to have paid anything to a man who could sit through a whole day watching the opening bud of a new rose. Canterton was one of the family of the big, patient people, the men of the microscope and the laboratory, who discover great things quietly, and remain undiscovered by the apes who sit and gibber at a clown on a stage.
Canterton had picked up one of his pipes, when a maidservant appeared in one of the arches cut in the yew hedge. She sighted the man under the white umbrella and made her way towards him along one of the stone paths. ”

“ No Canton youth who aims at the first social order thinks of setting himself to make money; to enter the service of the government is his object, and to achieve this he studies literature. There is practically no barrier in China to becoming a "literate," and the classification means all that the word "gentleman" can in Europe. For this and other reasons thousands of men in Canton wear horn-rimmed spectacles, look wise, and discuss mundane affairs in a manner brooking no contention. The literary bureaucracy of Canton wields a mighty influence in the affairs of the nation, it is insisted. ”

“ I should omit more trifling causes of favour, if I did not think them necessary to illustrate the character of the parties, and of the times of which I am speaking, and to show the attention which Mr. Canning, once engaged in the task of recasting our foreign policy, gave to the smallest circumstances which might facilitate it. In the ordinary acceptation of the word, he was not a courtier, or a man of the world. Living, as I have already stated, in the midst of a small clique of admirers, and little with society at large, he confined his remarkable powers of pleasing to his own set. ”

“ So, to identify his own property, Ching Wan dyed all his chickens' tails orange, whilst Hung To's fowls scratched about with mauve tails, and Kyang Foo's hens gave themselves great airs on the strength of their crimson tail feathers.
It is curious that, in spite of its wealth and huge population, Canton should contain no fine temples. The much-talked-of Five-Storied Pagoda is really hardly worth visiting, except for the splendid panorama over the city obtained from its top floor. Canton here appears like one endless sea of brown roofs extending almost to the horizon. ”

“ Thus it is from Kant, directly or indirectly, that the German egotists draw the conviction which is their most tragic error. Their self-assertion and ambition are ancient follies of the human race; but they think these vulgar passions the creative spirit of the universe. Kant, or that soul within Kant which was still somewhat cramped in its expression, was the prophet and even the founder of the new German religion. ”

“ PHYSIC STREET—A CHINESE CROWD—A CANTONESE PICKPOCKET—BEGGARS AND BARBERS. Honest travellers, who have visited Canton, have related twenty times the endeavours they have made to enter the walled city, the dangers they have encountered and the semi-success they have met with. Semi-success is an expression which disguises a poor falsehood ”

“ The first impression of Canton is one of noise, a fearful din rising and falling in a kind of cadence, and seeming to proceed largely from an immense flotilla of boats extending a long way, tied, in a majority of cases, seven and eight rows deep—craft of all kinds, sampans, junks, rice boats, freight, each with its quota of humanity, for this is a veritable floating city, with a life all its own, and almost wholly independent of the Canton proper which we were about to visit and which numbered a hundred thousand souls. ”

“ Before Naftel's show-window, a jet of bright gas burned into a jibberwock land of toys. There was that in Sarah Kantor's face that was actually lyrical, as, fumbling at the bosom of her dress, she entered.
To Leon Kantor, by who knows what symphonic scheme of things, life was a chromatic scale, yielding up to him through throbbing, living nerves of sheep-gut, the sheerest semitones of man's emotions.
When he tucked his Stradivarius beneath his chin, the Book of Life seemed suddenly translated to him in melody. ”

“ From afar appeared the numerous pagodas of Canton, with their domes adorned with little gold bells. Our boat nosed her way into the crowded river, traversed by a perpetual scurry of launches, and we were at once surrounded by a flotilla of numerous sampans ornamented with golden devices. We were deafened by the screams and the dreadful noise. Canton is a veritable town of amphibians. There is not room enough on land for the two million inhabitants, who spend all their lives on the water in floating huts. ”

“ No city in Europe can give an idea of the movement and life which reign in the streets of Canton. The streets of Canton alone can convey an idea of the feverish activity which reigns on the Tchou-kiang. In the midst of this prodigious passing and repassing, of goods in the course of being shipped and unshipped, of faï-tings, of lorchas, of junks, of vessels coming to anchor or setting sail, of mandarins cruising about in their rich craft, and of tradesmen proceeding to business, the itinerant cooks enumerate their ragouts ”

“ Canton is so old that even the native custodians of local tradition have lost count of the years since it was founded. Some of the ancient coolies crouching near the wharves and sunning their wrinkled skins look as if they might be able to tell the age of their city; but a whimsical question elicits only a request for alms, mumbled with a mouth which has lost its teeth, so that the owner meets with difficulty in chewing even the small portions of food needed to keep the spark of life aglow in his shaky body. ”

“ Canning’s reputation for wit, at this time, gained solely by his pen. Living with few, though much the fashion, who could be more charming in his own accomplished circle—when, the pleasant thought lighting up his eye, playing about his mouth, and giving an indescribable charm to his handsome countenance, he abandoned himself to the inspiration of some happy moment, and planned a practical joke, or quizzed an incorrigible bore, or related some humorous anecdote? No one’s society was so much prized by associates; no one’s talents so highly estimated by friends ”

“ Meanwhile, to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour, had assembled the house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the tenement which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing, delirium, delirium-tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression into the motley din of things. Isadore, already astride his chair, well into center-table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound loaf; Esther Kantor, old at chores, settled an infant into the high chair, careful of tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib. ”