The inferiority of photographs to the best works of artists, so far as resemblance is concerned, lies in their catching no more than a single expression. If many photographs of a person were taken at different times, perhaps even years apart, their composite would possess that in which a single photograph is deficient.

The object . . . is to discover methods of condensing information concerning large groups of allied facts into brief and compendious expressions suitable for discussion.

It is notorious that the same discovery is frequently made simultaneously and quite independently, by different persons. Thus, to speak of only a few cases in late years, the discoveries of photography, of electric telegraphy, and of the planet Neptune through theoretical calculations, have all their rival claimants. It would seem, that discoveries are usually made when the time is ripe for them - that is to say, when the ideas from which they naturally flow are fermenting in the minds of many men.

Life is a republic where the individuals are for the most part unconscious that while they are working for themselves they are also working for the public good.

Exercising the right of occasional suppression and slight modification, it is truly absurd to see how plastic a limited number of observations become, in the hands of men with preconceived ideas.

It is always the case with the best work, that it is misrepresented, and disparaged at first, for it takes a curiously long time for new ideas to become current, and the older men who ought to be capable of taking them in freely, will not do so through prejudice.

All male animals, including men, when they are in love, are apt to behave in ways that seem ludicrous to bystanders.