If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.
Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult–at least I have found it so–than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die – which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.
Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.
None can reply – all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue, which teaches awful doubt.
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
In the future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by graduation.
It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected.
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.
But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.
Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
Origin of man now proved.—Metaphysics must flourish.—He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must occasionally have felt surprise when he has met with an animal having habits and structure not at all in agreement.
But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.
One hand has surely worked throughout the universe.
A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.
In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.
[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.
Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.
I agree with Agassiz that dogs possess something very like a conscience.
I have called the principle by which each slight variation if useful is preserved by the term of Natural Selection.
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate and is sometimes equally convenient.
I have called this principle by which each slight variation if useful is preserved by the term natural selection.
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the “Survival of the fittest” is more accurate and is sometimes equally convenient.
A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.
As for future life every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us and I for one must be content to remain agnostic.
As for a future life every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague possibilities.
I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.
The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.