Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.

At the end of life thoughts hitherto impossible come to the collected mind, like good spirits which let themselves down from the shining heights of the past.

If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.

There is nothing by which men display their character so much as in what they consider ridiculous... Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. It is in the half fools and the half wise that the great danger lies.

The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.