I finished your book yesterday. . . Since I read Von Baer’s Essays …

I finished your book yesterday. . . Since I read Von Baer’s Essays nine years ago no work on Natural History Science I have met with has made so great an impression on me & I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you have given me. . .As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite. . .I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you. . . And as to the curs which will bark and yelp — you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead — I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness Thomas Henry Huxley
1825-1895, Letter of T. H. Huxley to Charles Darwin, November 23, 1859, regarding the Origin of Species

Now I have read it and reread it, and have come to …

Now I have read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends; and I am almost more fond of it than of your previous books. Indeed, I feel about going to Africa very much as the sea-faring rat did when he almost made the water-rat wish to forsake everything and start wandering! Theodore Roosevelt
On The Wind in the Willows