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

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow.

We say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors.

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.