There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.

Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.

I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.

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.

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.

Modesty in women has two special advantages,--it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.