Error, never can be consistent, nor can truth fail of having support from the accurate examination of every circumstance..

With such wisdom has nature ordered things in the economy of this world, that the destruction of one continent is not brought about without the renov….

We are not to suppose, that there is any violent exertion of power, such as is required in order to produce a great event in little time; in nature, ….

The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the glo….

The globe of this earth … [is] … not just a machine but also a organised body as it has a regenerative power..

If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite vari….

Time, which measures everything in our idea, and is often deficient to our schemes, is to nature endless and as nothing; it cannot limit that by whic….

When we trace the part of which this terrestrial system is composed, and when we view the general connection of those several parts, the whole presen….

In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires..

To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully ador….

A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, ….

As there is not in human observation proper means for measuring the waste of land upon the globe, it is hence inferred, that we cannot estimate the d….

Man is made for science; he reasons from effects to causes, and from causes to effects; but he does not always reason without error. In reasoning, th….

The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end..

A soil adapted to the growth of plants, is necessarily prepared and carefully preserved; and, in the necessary waste of land which is inhabited, the ….

There is no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end..

[It] is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth..