You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong.

We have used the Bible as if it was a mere special constable's handbook — an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded — a mere book to keep the poor in order.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.

All the butterflies and cockyolybirds would fly past me.

Study nature as the countenance of God.

A garden, sir, wherein all rainbows and flowers were heaped together.