By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.

By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.

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 sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.

It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.

I have known men of valor cowards to their wives.

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!