Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.

We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.

The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.

No society can ever be so large as one man.

Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.