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A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.

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
Like
Reappears
Extinct
Species
Language
Never

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true.
Charles Darwin
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...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.
Charles Darwin
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The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God.
Charles Darwin
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The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.
Charles Darwin
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We fancied even that the bushes smelt unpleasantly.
Charles Darwin
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Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.
Charles Darwin
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The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Charles Darwin
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Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.
Charles Darwin
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Sympathy for the lowest animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed.
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 fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important....It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.
Charles Darwin
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The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.
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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[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
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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There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Charles Darwin
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It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
Charles Darwin
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...one doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others. This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything...nor ought one to blame others.
Charles Darwin
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I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.
Charles Darwin
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I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.
Charles Darwin