Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation - this to to have succeeded.

Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.

There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.