Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.

Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of "I" in one word is too much.

In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.

A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in that time ..., not in a free state, but in a state of combination.

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.