“Our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!”

Considered as a mere question of physics, (and keeping all moral considerations entirely out of sight,) the appearance of man is a geological phenomenon of vast importance

Or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world.

We must in imagination sweep off the drifted matter that clogs the surface of the ground;

The utmost movements that he allows are a slight quivering of her muscular integuments.

Among the older records, we find chapter after chapter of which we can read the characters, and make out their meaning: and as we approach the period of man’s creation,

If the [Vestiges] be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine

The world is not as it was when it came from its Maker’s hands.

Our chronicle seems to fail us-a leaf has been torn out from nature’s record, and the succession of events is almost hidden from our eyes.

As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God’s anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex.

Like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

Indirectly modifying the whole surface of the earth, breaking in upon any supposition of zoological continuity, and utterly unaccounted for by what we have any right to call the laws of nature.

A cold atheistical materialism is the tendency of the so-called material philosophy of the present day.

Yet Mr. Lyell will admit no greater paroxysms than we ourselves have witnessed-no periods of feverish spasmodic energy, during which the very framework of nature has been convulsed and torn asunder.

And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.

The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue’s game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying

The powers of nature are never in repose; her work never stands still.

And I observe that for the vast majority of the Labour government we had a top rate of 40 per cent income tax. It’s now higher, and I think we should look to get to a simpler, lower tax system.

I admire Peter Mandleson’s chutzpah and the way he transformed the Labour party but not his dubious ideas about Europe and industrial policy.

Labour want to control all parts of the economy and society so that they can pursue the politics of envy. It would leave us all paying higher taxes and the economy in tatters.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

It was fine for my Polish Ashkenazi forebears to live on dumplings and potatoes, because they laboured in the fields. But that diet is unsuitable for an urban lifestyle.