Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

Carve every word before you let it fall.

Science is the topography of ignorance. From a few elevated points we triangulate vast spaces, inclosing infinite unknown details. We cast the lead, and draw up a little sand from abysses we may never reach with our dredges.

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

Success. Is not the position where you are standing, but which direction you are going.

Who does not feel that Nansen's account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?