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The fly should be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.

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Two Chinamen traveling in Europe went to the theatre for the first time.  One of them did nothing but study the machinery, and he succeeded in finding out how it was worked.  The other tried to get at the meaning of the piece in spite of his ignorance of the language.  Here you have the Astronomer and the Philosopher.

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Wisdom which is only theoretical and never put into practice, is like a double rose; its color and perfume are delightful, but it withers away and leaves no seed.

No rose without a thorn.  Yes, but many a thorn without a rose.

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A wide-spreading apple-tree stood in full bloom, and behind it a straight fir raised its dark and tapering head. Look at the thousands of gay blossoms which cover me everywhere, said the apple-tree; what have you to show in comparison?  Dark-green needles!  That is true, replied the fir, but when winter comes, you will be bared of your glory; and I shall be as I am now.

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Once, as I was botanizing under an oak, I found amongst a number of other plants of similar height one that was dark in color, with tightly closed leaves and a stalk that was very straight and stiff.  When I touched it, it said to me in firm tones:  Let me alone; I am not for your collection, like these plants to which Nature has given only a single year of life.  I am a little oak.

So it is with a man whose influence is to last for hundreds of years.  As a child, as a youth, often even as a full-grown man, nay, his whole life long, he goes about among his fellows, looking like them and seemingly as unimportant.  But let him alone; he will not die.  Time will come and bring those who know how to value him.

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The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as though he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper under him.

There is a mystery which only those will understand who feel the truth of it.

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Your estimation of a man’s size will be affected by the distance at which you stand from him, but in two entirely opposite ways according as it is his physical or his mental stature that you are considering.  The one will seem smaller, the farther off you move; the other, greater.

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