No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of wo… - John Ruskin

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

The water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled with corpses.