Arcadia | Quotes

Thomasina Coverly explains the one-way direction of time that prevents going back to the past or undoing what has been done by putting something back together again. Time always moves forward no matter what.

Hannah Jarvis complains about the chauvinistic attitude of the clique of male Byron scholars who criticized her last book.

Septimus Hodge explains the deep cycles of time with the theory that everything known will be forgotten and then rediscovered over and over throughout history.

Valentine Coverly talks about the development of the chaos and complexity theory in quantum physics and the discovery that subatomic particles do not behave according to the predictable, orderly laws of Newtonian physics. He alludes to the Cubist painter Pablo Picasso, whose works were abstracted and distorted through geometry.

Valentine Coverly explains what it is like to live through a scientific paradigm shift that changes humanity's way of understanding the world. There have been few major shifts in history; one is the development of quantum physics in the 20th century, which sought to study the movement of atoms and subatomic particles that do not follow any rules of motion.

This statement reflects Bernard Nightingale's romantic view that knowledge that provides insight into the human condition is more important than scientific knowledge.

During an entanglement of illicit sexual goings-on at Sidley Park, Lady Croom speaks about the tendency to desire people outside a relationship or who are unavailable.

Septimus Hodge refers to Isaac Newton's claim that German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz plagiarized his calculus. Both are credited with inventing calculus independently. Septimus is willing to credit the Germans with the invention of the waltz, a word of German derivation, a dance, but he will not give up calculus, the mathematical study of change.

Hannah Jarvis explains it is the desire to learn that sets humans apart from other beings.

Incredulous Septimus Hodge questions Thomasina Coverly's essay about her heat exchange diagram that explains the theory of entropy.