Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.

It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.

Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.

No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.