Charles Darwin Quotes

291 quotes in 3798 categories

• Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion but it would take an overwhelming amount of evidence to…
• Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.
• Some few, & I am one, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade…
• If worms have the power of acquiring some notion, however rude, of the shape of an object and over their burrows, as seems the case,…
• So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence,…
• The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr.…
• It is not the conscience which raises a blush, for a man may sincerely regret some slight fault committed in solitude, or he may suffer…
• It is well-known that those who have charge of young infants, that it is difficult to feel sure when certain movements about their mouths are…
• Jealousy was plainly exhibited when I fondled a large doll, and when I weighed his infant sister, he being then 15? months old. Seeing how…
• May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real…
• The young blush much more freely than the old but not during infancy, which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early…
• Why does man regret, even though he may endeavour to banish any such regret, that he has followed the one natural impulse, rather than the…
• It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter: thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental…
• It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting…
• From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals,…
• I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things. As far as I can conjecture the art consists in…
• About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that…
• I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of…
• It is really laughable to see what different ideas are prominent in various naturalists' minds, when they speak of 'species'; in some, resemblance is everything…
• Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions…

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