We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short steps.

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God ... I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.

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

Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.