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.
Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee and spirituous liqueurs.
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.
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.