“It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.”

“It is remarkable how often the first interpretations of new evidence have confirmed the preconceptions of its discoverers.”

“Days turn into weeks, which turn into months, which turn into years, which turn into decades, which turn into cemeteries. But love is eternal.”

“At twenty years of age, the old-fashioned schooling turned me out helpless, ignorant and dissatisfied. Forty years later I encounter the product of the new schooling — still more helpless, still more ignorant, and possibly not even dissatisfied.”

“No way you can get stuck. Your head is much smaller. Look at this big coconut of mine. It's practically Jupiter. Yours is more like, I don't know, Mercury or something.""That doesn't mean I'm going along with an idea that you're pulling out of Uranus."We both stopped to snicker. Hard to resist a Uranus joke.”

“Exactly what the great white eats in an emergency is a mystery ichthyologists solved by the late twentieth century after decades of investigation: whatever it wishes.”