Charles Darwin

It is consolatory to me that others find Professor Owen’s controversial writings as difficult to understand and to reconcile with each other, as I do.

On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression

This was the first of many delightful days never to be forgotten.

Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman.

I have thought the foregoing sentences worth quoting, as specimens of the surprising nonsense which has been written on the subject.

I was thus led to conclude that all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canals of worms.

Perhaps the correct way of viewing the whole subject would be, to look at the inheritance of every character whatever as the rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.

Man in the rudest state in which he now exists is the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth.

Nature, in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe.

No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephens’ ‘Illustrations of British Insects,’ the magic words, “captured by C. Darwin, Esq.”

His look of dejection was known to every member of the family, and was called his hot-house face.

Worms are nocturnal in their habits, and at night may be seen crawling about in large numbers, but usually with their tails still inserted in their burrows.

The man who first selected a pigeon with a slightly larger tail, never dreamed what the descendants of that pigeon would become through long-continued, partly unconscious and partly methodical, selection.

Dogs shew what may be fairly called a sense of humour, as distinct from mere play

The sealers say that the flesh of these birds, when cooked, is quite white, and very good eating; but bold must the man be who attempts such a meal.

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.

A hungry man, if tempting food is placed before him, may not show his hunger by any outward gesture, but he cannot check the secretion of saliva.

Worms are destitute of eyes, and at first I thought that they were quite insensible to light

And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups subordinate to groups.

Here, then, we have the idea of property; but this idea is common to every dog with a bone, and to most or all birds with their nests.