"That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem."

"Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do."

"To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life."

"Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of Species."

"This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest."

"Sexual selection acts in a less rigorous manner than natural selection. The latter produces its effects by the life or death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals."

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars."

"And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups subordinate to groups."

"It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain the what is the essence of the attraction of gravity?"

"How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!"

"But a plant on the edge of a deserts is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent upon the moisture."

"Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship"

"Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy."

"Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment."

"Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms."

"Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions."

"Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him."

"Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return."

"The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning."

"The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking."

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

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

"Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind."