Free will is to mind what chance is to matter..

Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fac….

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient..

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete..

It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards..

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason..

Nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in a distant country..

Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, excep….

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or….

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 crea….

Whenever I have found that I have blundered, or that my work has been imperfected, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even when I ha….

I often had to run very quickly to be on time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to….

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense..

When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying o….

What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoi….

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, tha….

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine..

There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank; it b….

The man who walks with Henslow..

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind..

But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling, speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be; I often mentally cry out 3 t….