If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.

Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.

I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.

Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.

It is belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found capital safely invested and richly productive of interest, although I have sometimes made but a bad use of it.