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Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification it can act only by very short steps.

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
Steps
Slight
Natural
Variation
Great
Solely
Selection
Accumulating
Sudden
Successive
Acts
Modification
Short
Variations
Produce
Favorable

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Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.
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I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity .... and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society.
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He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation ... Man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor.
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I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
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Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
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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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