The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.

Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.

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.

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.