... if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being perserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offsping similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.

Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.

we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us.

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.

I am not the least afraid to die

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.