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

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!

It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.

There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree

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

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

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives – of approving of some and disapproving of others.

Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care.

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

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

What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame; the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.

The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man’s ignorance.

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.

Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

You don’t bring glory or pleasure to God by hiding your abilities or by trying to be someone else. You only bring him enjoyment by being you.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

The more one does the more one can do.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.

The ability to change constantly and effectively is made easier by high-level continuity.

My greatest talent is in my ability to choose good friends. It’s about as important as things get.

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.