The way you spend Christmas is far more important than how much.

Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night.

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.

It is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical.