Over events, we may have some control, but over the law of life's progress none.

Antiquity was often delighted to cast a halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal honors. A legend into the authenticity of which we will abstain from inquiring, asserted that his mother, Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered an immaculate conception through the influence of Apollo. The god declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage of the child.

Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government.

Over events, we may have some control, but over the law of life's progress none.

The scientific study of Nature tends not only to correct and ennoble the intellectual conceptions of man; it serves also to ameliorate his physical condition.

So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.

Experimental investigation, to borrow a phrase employed by Kepler respecting the testing of hypotheses, is "a very great thief of time." Sometimes it costs many days to determine a fact that can be stated in a line.