I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact; but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old Chaos of scattered observations.

Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.

For science is ... like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.

O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands o' Dee!

Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.

I go at what I have to do as if there were nothing else in the world for me to do.

We shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand-the habit of mind which theologians call, and rightly, faith in God.