Quotes · page 6

I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.

The only secondary cause... which has, as yet, been even conjecturally brought forward, to explain how, in the ordinary course of nature, a new specific form may be generated is, as Lamarck declared, 'variation,' and this has been rendered …

Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.

[T]his work is not written to gain a public, but piam memoriam prodere conditoris nostri and is intended especially for those who have known and loved Francis Galton in the past, or who may in the future desire to understand and honour him.

Imitation will not always be stronger than reason, but it is today.

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever …

After that we find the line of the extrados of the arch in a graphical manner, derived from the formula given by [Édouard] Dejardin for tracing the equilibrium profile

The ambassador [of Russia] and the grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin.

That a thing is unnatural, in any precise meaning which can be attached to the word, is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.

The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.

The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Æschylus.

Be not solitary, be not idle.

I feel I no longer fit in with these times.

Humility, that low, sweet root From which all heavenly virtues shoot.

The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.

For Rules, like Crutches, are a needful Aid to the Lame, tho' an impediment to the Strong.

I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.

It seems to me a pity they should allow a philosophy so instinct with life to become infected with seeds of death in such notions as that of the unreality of all ideas of infinity and that of the mutability of truth, and in such confusions …

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full …

it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The terrible fluidity of self-revelation.

Praise is the shipwreck of historians.

It is very sad, but I'm afraid America is bound to forge ahead and nothing can restore the equality between us. If we had interfered in the Confederate War it was then possible for us to reduce the power of the United States to manageable …

The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!