The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature's cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.

We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.

Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.

But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand.