The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.

If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this.

Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences

Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.

Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.