Some gifted adventurer is always sailing round the world of art and science, to bring home costly merchandise from every port.Collection: Art
Attention makes the genius; all learning, fancy, science and skills depend upon it. Newton traced his discoveries to it. It builds bridges, opens new worlds, heals diseases, carries on the business of the world. Without it taste is useless, and the beauties of literature unobserved.Collection: Science
In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.Collection: Art
Newton found that a star, examined through a glass tarnished by smoke, was diminished into a speck of light. But no smoke ever breathed so thick a mist as envy or detraction.Collection: Stars
Joy and grief are never far apart. In the same street the shutters of one house are closed, while the curtains of the next are brushed by shadow of the dance. A wedding-party returns from church, and a funeral winds to its door. The smiles and the sadness of life are the tragi-comedy of Shakespeare. Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror he beholds.Collection: Party
The discovery of one star is the promise of another.Collection: Stars
The amplest knowledge has the largest faith. Ignorance is always incredulous. Tell an English cottager that the belfries of Swedish churches are crimson, and his own white steeple furnishes him with a contradiction.Collection: Ignorance
We waste the power in impatience which, if, otherwise employed, might remedy the evil.Collection: Evil
Some imitation is involuntary and unconscious.Collection: Imitation
Humor is the pensiveness of wit.Collection: Humor