When we build ... let it not be for present delights nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think ... that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor, and the wrought substance of them, See! This our fathers did for us!

Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them.

Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.

The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight.

There is no solemnity so deep, to a right-thinking creature, as that of dawn.