You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.
I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good and original observation.
Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.
It struck me that favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones tend to be destroyed.
Although I am fully convinced of the truth of Evolution, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists. But I look with confidence to the future naturalists, who will be able to view both sides with impartiality.
It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the “race is for the strong” and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.
I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley.
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
I long to set foot where no man has trod before.
Animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from annul and may exhibit curiosity.
I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.
I am not the least afraid to die.
What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.
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.
I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.
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.
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.
We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.