...for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.

The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete.

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

The Times is getting more detestable (but that is too weak word) than ever.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.

I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts.

Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.

[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved

Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.

If every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty.

The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.

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

A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.

Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music.

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

Animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from annul and may exhibit curiosity.

... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.

Sympathy for the lowest animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed.

It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

Nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in a distant country.

I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good and original observation.

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.

If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.

Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.

Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature's cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.

we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.

Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.

There is no fundamental difference between humans and the higher mammalsin their mental faculties

Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.

Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.

I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.

The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.

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