...all nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it.

I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity .... and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society.

On your life, underestimating the proclivities of finches is likely to lead to great internal hemorrhaging.

... probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.

We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals!

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men

We are optimists, until we are not.