Music was known and understood before words were spoken.

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

On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.

What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame; the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.

If a person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils.