It is rather remarkable that the majority of learned men have closed t — Oliver Lodge

"What properties are essential to a medium capable of transmitting wave motion? Roughly, we may say two: elasticity and inertia."

"The waves of light are not anything mechanical or material, but are something electrical and magnetic—they are, in fact, electrical disturbances periodic in space and time, and travelling with a known and tremendous speed through the ether of space. Their very existence depends upon the ether, and their speed of propagation is its best known and most certain quantitative property."

"Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is. We change our state at birth, and come into the world of air and sense and myriad existence; we change our state at death and enter a region of—what?"

"Microscopic organisms may have troublesome and destructive effects, but in themselves they can be be studied with interest and avidity."

"Our memories are thronged with the past; our anticipations range over the future; and it is in the past and the future that we really live. It is so even with the higher animals: they too order their lives by memory and anticipation."

"The oldest and best known function for an ether is the conveyance of light, and hence the name "luminiferous" was applied to it, though at the present day many functions are known, and more will almost certainly be discovered."