In the drawing room [of the Queen's palace] hung a Venus and Cupid by Michaelangelo, in which, instead of a bit of drapery, the painter has placed Cupid's foot between Venus's thighs. Queen Caroline asked General Guise, an old connoisseur, if it was not a very fine piece? He replied "Madam, the painter was a fool, for he has placed the foot where the hand should be.

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians.

Nothing has shown more fully the prodigious ignorance of human ideas and their littleness, than the discovery of [Sir William] Herschell, that what used to be called the Milky Way is a portion of perhaps an infinite multitude of worlds!

Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.

The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.

One's mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.

[The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste--or is but half taste.