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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

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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
Noble
Save
Age
Another
Thought
Nothing
Life
Cowardice
Lays

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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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.
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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The tree of life should perhaps be called the coral of life, base of branches dead so that passages cannot be seen-this again offers contradiction to constant succession of germs in progress.
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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I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.
Charles Darwin
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We are optimists, until we are not.
Charles Darwin
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I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
Charles Darwin
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The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman.
Charles Darwin
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When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male which excels the female.
Charles Darwin
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A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.
Charles Darwin
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I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
Charles Darwin
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Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.
Charles Darwin
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Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.
Charles Darwin
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The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
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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Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist.
Charles Darwin
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On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”
Charles Darwin
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There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
Charles Darwin
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It is not the conscience which raises a blush, for a man may sincerely regret some slight fault committed in solitude, or he may suffer the deepest remorse for an undetected crime, but he will not blush... It is not the sense of guilt, but the thought that others think or know us to be guilty which crimsons the face.
Charles Darwin
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If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
Charles Darwin