Quote

I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.

Charles Darwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Long
Discovered
Never
Proof
Object
Objects
Works
Read
Geologists
Book
Geologist
Writing
Earnestness

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law ought to be passed.
Charles Darwin
Image
Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.
Charles Darwin
Image
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
Charles Darwin
Image
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
Charles Darwin
Image
It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction.
Charles Darwin
Image
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Charles Darwin
Image
A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones
Charles Darwin
Image
Who when examining in the cabinet of the entomologist the gay and exotic butterflies, and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless objects, the ceaseless harsh music of the latter, and the lazy flight of the former - the sure accompaniments of the still, glowing noonday of the tropics.
Charles Darwin
Image
Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of the Beagle, when I could take only a single small volume, I always chose Milton.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
Charles Darwin
Image
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
...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.—
Charles Darwin
Image
During my second year at Edinburgh [1826-27] I attended Jameson's lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredible dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
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.
Charles Darwin