The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

I should fear the infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, thumoi phileousa te, kedomene te.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.