Energy is the inherent effort of every multiplicity to become unity.

We shall some day catch an abstract truth by the tail, and then we shall have our religion and our immortality.

Politics cannot stop to study psychology Its methods are rough; its judgments rougher still.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.

After Gibbs, one the most distinguished [American scientists] was Langley, of the Smithsonian. ... He had the physicist's heinous fault of professing to know nothing between flashes of intense perception. ... Rigidly denying himself the amusement of philosophy, which consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, and liked to wander past them in a courteous temper, even bowing to them distantly as though recognizing their existence, while doubting their respectibility.

What a vast fraternity it is,--that of 'Hearts that Ache.' For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing; for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success.