Thomas Huxley Life Quotations

Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Life is like walking along a crowded street--there always seem to be fewer obstacles to getting along on the opposite pavement--and yet, if one crosses over, matters are rarely mended.

Living things have no inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.