It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.

A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.

It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.

Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea, too meaningless to be positively false

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust

In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.