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.

If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day

For a while, my self-control and my power of reason quailed to uselessness.

SciFi: When there's a serious problem and everyone decides to solve it sensibly.

We don't destroy our heroes today when we worshipped them yesterday.

Any situation was better faced with an empty bladder, a clean body, and a lack of morning breath.

The ghosts you chase you never catch.

Wizards are a secretive lot.

Hey! Sorry, lady, but nobody's staking anybody at this party! I hung a disco ball for this.

It looks like I had the most irrelevant education than anybody in the planet could have.

Religion provides us with a puritanical dream, which can never be realized because it goes against human nature.