As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

God is Unity, but always works in variety.

The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . .