On certain occasions, the eyes of the mind can supply the want of the most powerful telescopes, and lead to astronomical discoveries of the highest importance.

In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose.

Where should be be if we set ourselves to deny everything we do not know how to explain?

The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman.

Euler calculated without effort, just as men breathe, as eagles sustain themselves in the air.

To get to know, to discover, to publish-this is the destiny of a scientist.

Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making seductive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!