No joy in nature is so sublimely affecting as the joy of a mother at the good fortune of a child.

As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact, a full frequency of vibrations occurs.

The laboratory routine, which involves a great deal of measurement, filing, and tabulation, is either my lifeline or my chief handicap, I hardly know which.

My main point today is that usually one gets what one expects, but very rarely in the way one expected it.

[In plotting earthquake measurements] the range between the largest and smallest magnitudes seemed unmanageably large. Dr. Beno Gutenberg then made the natural suggestion to plot the amplitudes logarithmically.

I was lucky because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.

Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.