“The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.”

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.”

“People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!”

“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”

“There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.”

“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

“Such, said Nekayah, is the state of life, none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish it to change again. The world is not yet exhausted. Let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.”