The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.

I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brain... & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes.

I cannot see ... evidence of design and beneficence ... There seems to me too much misery in the world.

The normal food of man is vegetable.

Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.

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