Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee and spirituous liqueurs.
Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
Light may be shed on man and his origins.
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.
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.
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.
I conclude that the musical notes and rhythms were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.
And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
Building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
I always make special notes about evidence that contradicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.
It is a truly wonderful fact – the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity – that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group.
Only the fittest will survive.
Progress has been much more general than retrogression.
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.
It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction...
When the views entertained in this volume on the origin of species, or when analogous views are generally admitted, we can dimly forsee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history.
Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.
Sympathy for the lowest animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed.