James Clerk Maxwell

The world may be utterly crazy And life may be labour in vain; But I'd rather be silly than lazy, And would not quit life for its pain.

But listen, what harmony holy Is mingling its notes with our own! The discord is vanishing slowly, And melts in that dominant tone. And they that have heard it can never Return to confusion again,

Ask no more, then, "what is best, How shall those you love be blest," Ask at once eternal Rest, Peace and assurance giving. Rest of Life and not of death, Rest in Love and Hope and Faith,

By the hollow mauntain-side Questions strange I shout for ever, While echoes far and wide Seem to mock my vain endeavour; Still I shout, for though they never Cast my borrowed voice aside,

How the learned fool would wonder Were he now to see his blunder, When he put his reason under The control of worldly Pride.

the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the …

I hope that you will not tell me you have little fault to find with me, without finding that little and communicating it.

I mean—that I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me, and that if I escape, it is only by God's grace

all the evil influences that I can trace have been internal and not external

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.

the translation from the one course to the other is essentially miraculous, while the progress is natural.

Happiness and Misery must inevitably increase with increasing Power and Knowledge

every man has been given a progressively increasing power of communication with other creatures

The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.

Colour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state...

We may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.

But we have no right to think thus of the unsearchable riches of creation, or of the untried fertility of those fresh minds into which these riches will continue to be poured.

the opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be left to men of science will be to carry on these …

I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.

I have also cleared the electromagnetic theory of light from all unwarrantable assumption, so that we may safely determine the velocity of light by measuring the attraction between bodies kept at a given difference of potential, the value …

is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws.

This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself

we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena