Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application.

If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.

Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life?

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.