"Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty?"

"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act."

"The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts."

"An American Monkey after getting drunk on Brandy would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men."

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

"A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone."

"And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams Call to the soul when man doth sleep, So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, And into glory peep."

"At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface."

"The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands."

"Immortality lies not in the things you leave behind, but in the people your life has touched."

"There is no place in nature for extinction."

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."