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.

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

The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.

Imagine the world so greatly magnified that particles of light look like twenty-four-pound cannon balls.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

In every man there is something of all men.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.