Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.

It is frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. They have all been invented over and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He helps himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far as then need is.