The ragged cliff has thousand faces in a thousand hours.

The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.

There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

It is very odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She is no saint . . .

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.