Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

Genius is rare because the means of becoming one have not been available

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.

Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. ... All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.