On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

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.

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts.

There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved

Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.