"The human mind is seldom satisfied, and is certainly never exercising its highest functions, when it is doing the work of a calculating machine."

"At quite uncertain times and places, The atoms left their heavenly path, And by fortuitous embraces, Engendered all that being hath. And though they seem to cling together, And form 'associations' her…"

"The peculiar function of the scientific man is to make discoveries, not to talk about them."

"The chief philosophical difficulty in the present state of electrical science is to form a distinct conception of the mode in which electrical action is propagated through space."

"Mathematicians my flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express."