"Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science."

"I am not the least afraid to die"

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

"It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance."

"To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact."

"There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery."

"We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it."

"The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

"Dr Blair . . . asked . . . whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems [Ossian] . . . `Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.'"

"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life."

"Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be."

"Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us"

"The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions."

"Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic"

"The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence"

"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions"

"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

"My dear friend, clear your mind of can't."

"I am willing to love all mankind, except an American."

"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging."

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

"Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize"

"What we ever hope to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence."

"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."

"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."

"Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements."

"Smoking. . . is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes and noses, and having the same thing done to us."

"I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed."

"...I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.—"

"Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character."

"The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed."

"The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason."

"We are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps"

"Wherever the European had trod, death seemed to pursue the aboriginal."

"But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art."

"A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone."

"Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music."

"We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence."

"The triumph of hope over experience"

"The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear"

"Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."

"Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last"

"Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing."

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

"He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions."

"I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark."

"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse."

"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic."

"Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well."

"There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?"