How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad - simply because the thinking faculties have lain dormant!
The wisest man may be a blind father.
In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York!
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
Man is never perfect, nor contented.
Ah! Young people, travel if you can, and if you cannot - travel all the same!
It is said that the night brings counsel, but it is not said that the counsel is necessarily good.
The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.
Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.
You're never rich enough if you can be richer.
If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence.
It may be taken for granted that, rash as Americans usually are, when they are prudent, there is good reason for it.
Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.
Liberty is worth paying for.
The body regulates the soul, and, like the balance-wheel, it is submitted to regular oscillations.
What is there unreasonable in admitting the intervention of a supernatural power in the most ordinary circumstances of life?
With happiness as with health: to enjoy it, one should be deprived of it occasionally.
Be it understood you are never rich when you get no advantage from it.
He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.
Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.
In the United States, there is no project so audacious for which people cannot be found to guarantee the cost and find the working expenses.
Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
In presence of Nature's grand convulsions, man is powerless.
An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.
I have noticed that many who do not believe in God believe in everything else, even in the evil eye.
Fellows who have rascally faces have only one course to take, and that is to remain honest; otherwise, they would be arrested off-hand.
Numerous observations made upon fevers, somnambulisms, and other human maladies, seem to prove that the moon does exercise some mysterious influence upon man.
The Chinaman has only a passive courage, but this courage he possesses in the highest degree. His indifference to death is truly extraordinary. When he is ill, he sees it approach, and does not falter. When condemned, and already in the hands of an officer, he manifests no fear.
The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.
When you bring a man two millions of money, you need have but little fear that you will not be well received.
The regions of the North Pole situated within the eighty-fourth degree of north latitude have not yet been utilized, for the very good reason that they have not yet been discovered.
It is for others one must learn to do everything; for there lies the secret of happiness.
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
Everything great in science and art is simple. What can be less complicated than the greatest discoveries of humanity - gravitation, the compass, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph?
On the morrow the horizon was covered with clouds- a thick and impenetrable curtain between earth and sky, which unhappily extended as far as the Rocky Mountains. It was a fatality!
Imagine a society in which there were neither rich nor poor. What evils, afflictions, sorrows, disorders, catastrophes, disasters, tribulations, misfortunes, agonies, calamities, despair, desolation and ruin would be unknown to man!
When science has sent forth her fiat - it is only to hear and obey.
Dost thou not understand that there are two distinct forces in us, that of the soul and that of the body, that is, a movement and a regulator?
Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse; it will become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon, which has long since lost all its vital heat.
Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
To put up with what you cannot avoid is a philosophical principle, that may not perhaps lead you to the accomplishment of great deeds, but is assuredly eminently practical.
Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?
I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.
The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears.
'Movement is life;' and it is well to be able to forget the past, and kill the present by continual change.
The industrial stomach cannot live without coal; industry is a carbonivorous animal and must have its proper food.
