But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand.

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete.