And what are those things at all?" demands my companion, diverted for — William McFee

"One must choose between Obscurity with Efficiency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of Bluff. There is a period, well on toward middle life, when a man can say such things to himself and feel comforted."

"A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on."

"It is so much easier to tell intimate things in the dark."

"A trouble is a trouble, and the general idea, in the country, is to treat it as such, rather than to snatch the knotted cords from the hand of God and deal out murderous blows."

"It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold."

"Steam is the friend of man. Steam engines are very human. Their very weaknesses are understandable. Steam engines do not flash back and blow your face in. They do not short-circuit and rive your heart with imponderable electric force. They have arms and legs and warm hearts and veins full of warm vapour. Give us steam every time. You know where you are with steam."

"Im weary, Im weary,—this cold world of ours; I will go dwell afar, with fairies and flowers. . . . . Im weary, Im weary,—Im off with the wind: Can I find a worse fate than the one left behind?"

"Gather the flowers, but spare the buds."

"Yeah, there was a period in the late 80s where I was working with different shaman. Myself and a friend, Beene, would take ayahuasca - but it wouldnt be in the liquid form, it would be a freeze-dried pill - and mushrooms. Some of those trips were eighteen hours long and Ill never forget, once I ended up sitting by the bush trying to ask the flowers why they didnt like me. Its like, Why cant I be your friend? I was crawling out of my skin at that time. In my twenties I was really... I was just losing my mind."

"“Surfing the Web” (as dubious a metaphor as “the information highway”) is, as a friend of mine has it, “like reading magazines with the pages stuck together.” My wife shakes her head in dismay as I patiently await the downloading of some Japanese Beatles fans personal catalog of bootlegs. “But it’s from Japan!” She isnt moved. She goes out to enjoy the flowers in her garden."

"Thomson was a mathematical prodigy. At age 16, he mastered ’s and wrote and published a defense of it. Fourier’s theory allowed one to determine the distribution of heat in a body on the sole assumption that heat flow is proportional to temperature gradient. The approach was macroscopic, geometrical, and nonhypothetical, and Thomson took to it easily. During his undergraduate years at , he traveled to Paris and met the mathematical savants—in particular, mathematician Joseph Liouville and experimental physicist , who both considered Michael Faraday’s curved lines of force outré. At Liouville’s urging, Thomson produced for the a demonstration that the lines of force, whether electric or magnetic, followed from inverse square laws. The relevant mathematics was a near cousin to that for heat flow, but the insight was new and would be seminal in the thinking that led James Clerk Maxwell to electromagnetic field theory."

"Last night I couldnt sleep till after four in the morning – I had been out to the canyon all afternoon – till late at night – wonderful color – I wish I could tell you how big – and with the night the colors deeper and darker – cattle on the pastures in the bottom looked line little pinheads. I can understand Pa Dow painting his pretty colored canyons – it must have been a great temptation – no wonder he fell. Then the moon rose right up out of the ground after we got out on the plains again – battered a little where he bumped his head but enormous – There was no wind – it was just big and still – so very big and still – long legged jack rabbits hopping across in front of the light as we passed – A great place to see the night time because there is nothing else. – then I came home – not sleepy so I made a pattern of some flowers I had picked – They were like waterlilies – white ones – with the quality of smoothness gone."