Charles Lyell Quotes

37 quotes in 817 categories

• Man, whose organization is regarded as the highest, departs from the vertebrate archetype; and it is because the study of anatomy is usually commenced from,…
• Geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.
• Geology is the science which investigates the successive changes that have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it enquires into the…
• Millions of our race are now supported by lands situated where deep seas once prevailed in earlier ages. In many districts not yet occupied by…
• Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized…
• There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to…
• [My Book] will endeavour to establish the principle[s] of reasoning in ... [geology]; and all my geology will come in as illustration of my views…
• Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is…
• When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical…
• So far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life,-sensation,-instinct,-the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering…
• I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz, that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science,…
• The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our…
• Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for 'independent creation,' as it is often termed, or the…
• In the course of this short tour, I became convinced that we must turn to the New World if we wish to see in perfection…
• Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between…
• Each species may have had its origin in a single pair, or individual, where an individual was sufficient, and species may have been created in…
• I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a…
• In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is a depth of no more than from 5 to 15 feet of water, ancient…
• It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there are…
• No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the Seine; but no…

Browse Charles Lyell Quotes by Category