When we try to imagine a chaos we fail. ... In its very fiber the mind is an order and refuses to build a chaos.

Nature is full of by-ends. A moth feeds on a petal, in a moment the pollen caught on its breast will be wedding this blossom to another in the next county.

Ten builders rear an arch, each in turn lifting it higher; but it is the tenth man, who drops in the keystone, who hears our huzzas.

A calculating engine is one of the most intricate forms of mechanism, a telegraph key one of the simplest. But compare their value.

Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.

Dumbness and silence are two different things.

Truth is better disengaged from error than torn from it.