To despise our own species is the price we must often pay for knowledge of it.

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.