“A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double. The hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.” — Thoreau

“In quarrelling the truth is always lost.” — Publilius Syrus

“People born to be hanged are safe in water.” — Mark Twain’s mother

“I know of no rule which holds so true as that we are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.” — Thoreau

“We can scarcely hate any one that we know.” — William Hazlitt

“It is a curious thing that people only ask if you are enjoying yourself when you aren’t.” — Edith Nesbit

William Buckland awoke one night and told his wife, “My dear, I believe that Cheirotherium‘s footsteps are undoubtedly testudinal.” They induced a garden tortoise to walk through a paste of flour, and the impression it left matched the fossil footprint.

On summiting the Finsteraarhorn in 1845, M. Dollfus-Ausset cried, “The soul communes in the infinite with those icy peaks which seem to have their roots in the bowels of eternity!”

In 1919 Cecilia Payne bicycled to the Cambridge Solar Physics Observatory, found a man repairing the roof, and said, “I have come to ask why the Stark effect is not observed in stellar spectra.” He was E.A. Milne, and he didn’t know. “Later he became a good friend and a great inspiration to me.”