As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them.

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

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.