... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.

It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.

A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love - and if a pretty woman, all the better.

When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.