There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.

Adventurer: he that goes to meet whatever may come. Well, that is what we all do in the world one way or another.

Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!

The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang.

We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.

Man's cleverness is almost indefinite, and stretches like an elastic band, but human nature is like an iron ring. You can go round and round it, you can polish it highly, you can even flatten it a little on one side, whereby you will make it bulge out the other, but you will NEVER, while the world endures and man is man, increase its total circumference.

Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours.