When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.

An actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel.

Every reform was once a private opinion.

Fear is a great instructor.

Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.

A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg , and his whole body to irresistible destruction.

But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.