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Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.

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
Causes
Hopeless
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Nothing
Attempt
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Explain
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Similarity
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Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
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A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.
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The Times is getting more detestable (but that is too weak word) than ever.
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Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life
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The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.
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The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children.
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Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.
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One hand has surely worked throughout the universe.
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In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
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I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.
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We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
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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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From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed. ... To group all facts under some general laws.
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Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
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In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.
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If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.
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...I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.—
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We fancied even that the bushes smelt unpleasantly.
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So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted.
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Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature's cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.
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