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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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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
Distinctive
Named
Constant
Race
Whether
Character
May
Doubted

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Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.
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Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience.
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If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
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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.
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[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
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Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.
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In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God ... I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.
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I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.
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Farewell Australia! You ... are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.
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It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching.
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To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree
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Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
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In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.
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A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.
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Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
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Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
Charles Darwin
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Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
Charles Darwin
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The assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent deity.
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Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.
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We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
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