Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike.

There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.

Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.

There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.

Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.

"Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are."