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, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.
I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.
Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short steps.
The willing horse is always overworked.
A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love – and if a pretty woman, all the better.
Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.
We are optimists, until we are not.
The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven’t changed much.
It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the plan of creation or unity of design, etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact.
Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature’s cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.
Music was known and understood before words were spoken.
It’s not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive.
On your life, underestimating the proclivities of finches is likely to lead to great internal hemorrhaging.
The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.
The age-old and noble thought of ‘I will lay down my life to save another,’ is nothing more than cowardice.
It is like confessing to a murder.
Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.
If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with no practice at all, he might truly have been said to have done so instinctively.