If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we sneak it from him, stealing what he himself may have heard imperfectly, and add it to our own errors of spelling and opinion.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.

I would give something to know for whose sake precisely those deeds were really done which report says were done for the fatherland.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.