It is vain to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will tell itself.

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

I suppose you could never explain to the most ingenous molusk that such a creature as a whale existed.

We have more than we use.

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object.

A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.