Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.

Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.

Experience of actual fact either teaches fools or abolishes them.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books.

Poetry is the attempt which man makes to render his existence harmonious.