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The elements which are the most widely diffused have small atomic weights.

Certain characteristic properties of elements can be foretold from their atomic weights.

Elements which are similar as regards their chemical properties have atomic weights which are either of nearly the same value (eg. Pt, Ir, Os) or which increase regularly (eg. K, Ru, Cs).

Experimental work of great refinement is necessary in order to determine atomic weights. No relationships between them have yet been certainly found which make it possible for us to compute by any sort of calculation exactly the value of any one atomic weight from any other.

The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an apparent periodicity of properties.

It is more likely that more than a century will pass before we know the structure of the chemical atoms as thoroughly as we do our solar system.

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

Scientists didn't discover the noble gas helium - the second most common element in the universe - on Earth until 1895. And they thought it existed in minute quantities only, until miners found a huge underground cache in Kansas in 1903.

The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don't expect.

If you do an experiment and it gives you what you did not expect, it is a discovery.