If there was a little room somewhere in the British Museum that contained only about twenty exhibits and good lighting, easy chairs, and a notice imploring you to smoke, I believe I should become a museum man.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.