Various

“ Do we admire great men who swagger, who boast of their wealth, their strength, their courage, or their virtue? A little quiet consideration will persuade any man that there is one law for all nations alike—the law of justice and humanity—and that the greatest nation, according to any true conception of greatness, is the one which exemplifies that law most perfectly in its domestic and foreign policy. ”

“ In education, chemistry has steadily grown in importance, until a single university may have need of as many as twenty chemists in its teaching staff, teaching not only what is already known, but also the art of research. As a disciplinary study, chemistry ranks high in the college curriculum, and it opens the way to a new learned profession, equal in rank with those of more ancient standing.
For the material advancement of mankind the nineteenth century has done more than all the preceding ages combined, and science has been the chief instrument of progress. ”

“ Darwin’s mind which, worked over and developed in after years and compared and combined with subsequently accumulated facts, bore fruit in the Origin of Species and the transformation of science that resulted upon the enunciation of Mr. Darwin’s theory of descent.
We all regard the association of any object with great events or with those in which we have great interest as making it precious. We endow ships with a kind of personality, regard them affectionately, and often speak of them fondly, as if they were real living beings in whom we had an interest. ”

“ In every crisis, however black has been the storm, however fierce and ominous the lightning flash, there has followed in good time the gentle rain, soothing and allaying our fear, and giving renewed promise of prosperity and peace. ”

“ If during the war with Spain you stood in the cheering, surging crowds before the bulletin boards, if you heard storms of hisses greet the name of the innocent boy-King of Spain, or noted the cheer of triumph which applauded the capture of a lumber scow by an armored cruiser, you will have no difficulty in agreeing with me. You will smile at the idea of imputing to such men the credit of serious thought. ”

“ For every perilous tendency I have mentioned has its life in direct violation of the essential principles of science study, and may be restrained by extending the knowledge and habitual use of those principles.
I do not wish to claim for science work an unwarranted value in this respect, nor to deny the influence of other subjects in bringing about a moral evolution. It is true that history warns us by examples, that it points us to the failure of free governments in whose steps to destruction many of us seem only too willing to follow. ”

“ Every session of that body adds something to the expenses of the city, and it is a short and dull one that does not add many thousands of dollars to the burden of the New York taxpayers.
The revenues of the municipality are so small in comparison with what they should be that it is a difficult matter to find any excuse for the theory of government that existed in the days when perpetual franchises were given away. It is small consolation that the policy of municipal ownership is at last to prevail after so much of the public property has passed into the possession of private corporations. ”

“ It has been found necessary to deprive them of the control they once exercised, to the peril of the States and their own great harm. The question is as to the ways in which they are to be lifted into the safe plane of American citizenship. They must be so lifted, or we shall in time see established in the South a system of serfdom under the control of an oligarchy—a state of affairs in some regards worse than that of slavery, for it will lack the element of personal interest which did much to help the black in the first stages of his life with us. ”

“ The possibilities of the future are greater than the dreams of to-day, but new policies and new methods must and will prevail. The development of Greater New York must not be hampered by a financial system antiquated and imperfect. The city should have power to develop its material resources into revenue-yielding improvements, and then, with honest and intelligent government, the burden of taxation will be reduced to a minimum, and the ideal of the grandest municipality in the world will have been achieved. ”

“ We both felt what means the strong hand of a masterful race—the stronger when it withholds from smiting. I had seen a good example of one of the ways by which the wild men of Africa have been shaped to the habits of their masters. Such a scene as I have sketched is happily possible in only a limited part of the South—that in which there is a great body of negroes who have not yet been to any extent influenced by civilizing contact with the whites. ”

“ With all their utility, our present conceptions of chemical structure are incomplete; they represent only portions or special phases of some great general law, but so far as they go, properly used, they are valid.
But light is not the only physical force involved in chemical changes; heat and electricity are far more important. Heat, in particular, is essential to every chemical operation; it provokes combination and effects decomposition; it appears in one reaction and vanishes in another; apart from thermal phenomena the science of chemistry could not exist. ”

“ It is the counsel of such men which has fallen like the rain that follows the first bursting of the storm, and has given us courage and power to restrain ourselves and to face our hardest duty. For such men in our national affairs we may reverently offer thanks, and for an educational system which is partly, at least, responsible for them we may have sincere praise. But our safety must always depend upon the presence of such men, strong enough in numbers and in influence to control each difficult and dangerous situation which may threaten us. ”

“ We gain, only to see that more gain is possible; the opportunity for advance is infinite. Forever and ever thought can reach out into the unknown, and never need to weep because there are no more worlds to conquer.
It was the study of electro-chemical changes which led Berzelius to his electro-chemical theory of combination, and then to the dualistic theory, which has already been mentioned. ”

“ He is a strong, swift flier, and taxes the nerve and skill of the sportsman to a high degree, and to bring down a partridge under full wing in the evergreens in November sends a thrill of delight through one’s veins. ”

“ If people will go to a parade, yacht race, or an exposition, and consider themselves paid for their expenses, then surely they will find in this great spectacle of Nature not only an object of wonder and beauty, but also one of peculiar instruction in many important branches of science. ”

“ Even now, almost daily, advances are being made in the practical applications of electrolysis, and the forward movement is likely to continue throughout the coming century. From the curiously reversible chemical reactions of the secondary battery the automobile derives its power, and here again we find a field for invention so large that its limits are beyond our sight. From every peak that science can scale new ranges come into view. The solution of one problem always creates another, and this fact gives to scientific investigation its chief interest. ”

“ Some years ago we opened an old ore mine, where a pair of phœbe birds had placed their nest on a shelf a few feet overhead, a projecting rock protecting it from the flying stones of the blasts that were fired several times a day, and the men were working so near that they could almost touch it with their hands. These birds did not desert their nests until the young were old enough to leave. The site was not used the following year, as is usually the case with the phœbe bird.
No bird has insinuated himself into our affections more deeply than the bluebird. ”

“ Their greatness is so native to them that they are scarcely conscious of it; and they leave it to others to sing their praises. It is presuming altogether too intimate an acquaintance with the designs of Providence to claim that any race in particular is charged, above all others, with carrying those designs into effect. Who knows what reservoirs of moral and intellectual force may reside in nations and tribes whose world-action has been very obscure as yet? ”

“ Under the system of voluntary arbitration there is abundant room for growth, for the onus will be thrown on each contending state to square its conduct with that growing feeling in favor of arbitration which it will become more and more difficult to ignore. In every country the growth of law and the extension of the jurisdiction of the courts which administered it have been concurrent; the same rule must govern in the field of international law.
There are vast fields at present untouched by the law of nations. ”

“ Arnold, of Rugby, thought that much of high value for civilization lay dormant in the negro race, and it is too soon to say he was mistaken. Then, who knows what the Slavonic race may bring forth? Who can calculate the future of the vast human hive known as China? And, after all, what has any nation got to do except to behave itself, be it great or small, famous or of no great repute? ”

“ Take, for instance, the action of light upon chemical substances; it may provoke union of elements, or effect the decomposition of compounds; upon the latter phenomenon the art of photography depends. That salts of silver are chemically changed by light was the fundamental observation, and upon this fact most photographic processes, though not all, are founded. Thus light, working as a chemist in the laboratory of the photographic plate, has become the useful servant of all arts, all sciences, and all industries—an indispensable aid to invention and research. ”

“ We have not only made up our minds on insufficient evidence, but we have unmade them in a hurry on no evidence at all, showing a startling lack of confidence in our own judgments and of respect for them. ”

“ To agriculture also chemistry is a potent ally, whose value can hardly be overrated. It has created fertilizers and insecticides for the use of the farmer and taught their intelligent use, and in the many experiment stations of the world it is daily discovering facts or principles which are practically applicable to agriculture. The beet-sugar industry was developed by chemical researches and chemical methods; the arts of the dairy have been chemically improved;68 the food of all civilized nations is better and more abundant than it was before the chemist gave his aid to its production. ”

“ Naturally a very timid bird, the partridge will put up quite a bluff for a fight in defense of her young, and on two occasions I knew a partridge to show fight without any young. Experience has satisfied me that a partridge knows enough to try and get a tree between himself and the huntsman, and to keep it there until he is out of range. ”

“ Metallurgy is almost wholly a group of chemical processes; every metal is extracted from its ores by methods which rest on chemical foundations; analyses of fuel, flux, and product go on side by side with the smelting. The cyanide and chlorination processes for gold, the Bessemer process for steel, are apt illustrations of the advances in chemical metallurgy; but before these come into play the dynamite of the miner, another chemical invention, must have done its work underground. For rare minerals, the mere curiosities of twenty years ago, uses have been found ”

“ There is a great deal of silly talk current about the incomparable glories and unimaginable destinies of the Anglo-Saxon race; and it never seems to occur to those who indulge in such talk that a profound sense of one’s greatness is very far from being a sure sign of greatness. ”