When the great Kepler bad at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: "Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself.

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.

Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.

How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.