“I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.”

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.

Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us – of their imagined approbation or disapprobation.

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.

He who remains passive when over-whelmed with grief loses his best chance of recovering his elasticity of mind.

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

At no time am I a quick thinker or writer: whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience and industry.

A language, like a species, when extinct, never – reappears.

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

I will never be an old man. To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.

The Crusades – the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

Baby we are not getting older each day we live our new versions and the new has no age.

My bloody hands that hold on to faith. Learned that we grow with pain and not age.

I don’t age anymore .

I had been playing polo, and I decided to give up at the age of 50.

Books are certainly old fashioned, but only people with a very limited perception are silly enough to condemn ideas because of their age.