Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.

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.

It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.

The sun rarely shines in history, what with the dust and confusion; and when we meet with any cheering fact which implies the presence of this luminary, we excerpt and modernize it.