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

Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Travel Writer
The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Tends
Species
Nature
Good
Men
Selects

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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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.
Charles Darwin
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What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
Charles Darwin
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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 strong a feeling of jealousy is in dogs, it would probably be exhibited by infants at any earlier age than just specified if they were tried in a fitting manner
Charles Darwin
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What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern?
Charles Darwin
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...conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse.
Charles Darwin
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We may confidently come to the conclusion, that the forces which slowly and by little starts uplift continents, and that those which at successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are identical.
Charles Darwin
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I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever - much cleverer than the discoverers - never originate anything.
Charles Darwin
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It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.
Charles Darwin
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Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us - of their imagined approbation or disapprobation.
Charles Darwin
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You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.
Charles Darwin
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I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.
Charles Darwin
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Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.
Charles Darwin
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On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
Charles Darwin
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I look at the natural geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved and of each page, only here and there a few lines.
Charles Darwin
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That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.
Charles Darwin
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Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.
Charles Darwin
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And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
Charles Darwin
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It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
Charles Darwin
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It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved that the subject was in the air, or that men's minds were prepared for it. I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.
Charles Darwin
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The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.
Charles Darwin