I see no good reason why the views given this volume [The Origin of Species] should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.'

Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose.

It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching.

On your life, underestimating the proclivities of finches is likely to lead to great internal hemorrhaging.

I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce [direct] evidence of one species changing into another, but I believe that this view is in the main correct, because so many phenomena can thus be grouped end explained.

... probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.

Light may be shed on man and his origins.