Occupation: Naturalist Birth: February 12, 1809 Death: April 19, 1882
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others..
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact..
And hail their queen, fair regent of the night..
I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what ri….
Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that gener….
A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law o….
If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception..
It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another...we consider those, where the intellectual faculties most developed as the highest. - A….
When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male whi….
That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, ….
Each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio . . . each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each ….
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this r….
Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experien….
I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions..
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic..
I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things; and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very c….
Some few, and I am one of them, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. I….
We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest….
Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions..
Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. ske….