I like, you may say, the glitter and colour that comes from the mouth, and I've always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.

But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.

If any human being earnestly desire to push on to new discoveries instead of just retaining and using the old; to win victories over Nature as a worker rather than over hostile critics as a disputant; to attain, in fact, clear and demonstrative knowlegde instead of attractive and probable theory; we invite him as a true son of Science to join our ranks.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.