The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.

A well-cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educated during all this time.

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.

It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.

Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.

To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.