One day man will connect his
apparatus to the very wheel work of
the universe. The very forces that
motivate the planets in their orbits
and cause them to rotate will rotate
his own machinery.
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
The ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.
Men of success meet with tragedy. It was the will of God that I won the Olympics, and it was the will of God that I met with my accident. I accepted those victories as I accept this tragedy. I have to accept both circumstances as facts of life and live happily.
There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.
When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.
Any man that resists the present tides that run in the world, will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem he has been separated from his human kind forever.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.