What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

To be busy is man's only happiness.

We were surprised how closely the cuckoo imitated the clock-and yet, of course, it could never have heard a clock.

I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.

In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.