It is better to read a little and thoroughly than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.

The clergy are at present divided into three sections: an immense body who are ignorant; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowledge.

If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.

Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfills the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. And science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.

Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.