Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose.
So great is the economy of Nature, that most flowers which are fertilized by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit their odor chiefly or exculsively in the evening.
I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.
It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.
To my deep mortification my father once said to me, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”
The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.
As the sense of smell is so intimately connected with that of taste, it is not surprising that an excessively bad odour should excite wretching or vomitting in some persons.
We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.
Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe.
The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man’s ignorance.
With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes.
If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.
The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.
If I had life to live over again, I would give my life to poetry, to music, to literature, and to art to make life richer and happier. In my youth I steeled myself against them and thought them so much waste.
I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
I have long discovered that geologists never read each other’s works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.
I feel like an old warhorse at the sound of a trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles.