They say that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who never learn one way or another anything; there are people who learn from their own mistakes, eventually and with great pain; and then there are the really wise people who learn from other people's mistakes and spare themselves the suffering.

It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.

Reality has taught us that no woman can build an honest life without sacrificing something along the way. Deciding what will be sacrificed is not easy.

longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness

Devotion is diligence without assurance. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be by definition faith. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark.

The nineteenth century was the last moment in history when a relatively educated layperson could follow what was going on in the world of science and invention to a wide degree. Also, there were no "professionals". This was a time when amateur explorers, naturalists and enthusiasts were are still making major contributions to progress.

I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply desperately want to have a wedding.