Bright and illustrious illusions! Who can blame, who laugh at the boy, who not admire and commend him, for that desire of a fame outlasting the Pyramids by which he insensibly learns to live in a life beyond the present, and nourish dreams of a good unattainable by the senses?
If new species arise very rapidly in small, peripherally isolated local populations, then the great expectation of insensibly graded fossil sequences is a chimera. A new species does not evolve in the area of its ancestors; it does not arise from the slow transformation of all its forbears. co-author with Niles Eldridge
Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You can find yourself insensibly twisting them round to suit your theories.
Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
The clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.
Children should learn to draw as they learn to write, and such a mystery should not be made of it. They should be encouraged, not flattered. . . then [later in life] double the effort is required to get the facility which might have been gained insensibly.
When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.
Winged time glides on insensibly, and deceive us; and there is nothing more fleeting than years.
The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics.
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.
