Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape.

It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them, much as if a composer found that sailors could heave better when singing his songs.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.