Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.

Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.

My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men.

The beginning of 1856 found me teaching in the family of a planter named Bryan, residing in Prince George County, Md., some fifteen or twenty miles from Washington.

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.

Quite likely the twentieth century is destined to see the natural forces which will enable us to fly from continent to continent with a speed far exceeding that of a bird.

What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed.

So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.

You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love, you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.

Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.

God save us from half the people who think they're doing God's work.

If there is any better way to teach virtue than by practicing it, I do not know it.

How do you find a way to say what an extraordinary experience it is to be alive in this world? That is the kind of subject matter I try to work with.

Somehow the bright beauty had gone from April afternoon and from her heart as well and the sad sweetness of remembering was as bitter as gall.

For me, a great story is one in which the protagonist faces unimaginable odds; where the stakes are high that failure constitutes a disaster.

It is not possible to speak of the right to choose when a clear moral evil is involved, when what is at stake is the commandment, Do not kill!

If you're a director, your entire livelihood and your entire creativity is based on your self-confidence. Sometimes that's dangerously close to arrogance.

Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.